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Illinois Takes Leadership Role On Immigrant Integration

Part I -Advocates Partner with Government

Background
The nation's foreign-born population has grown dramatically in recent years. In the 1990s, 11 million adopted America as their home. Yet, even as this growth continues, there is a complete absence of federal government leadership on integrating immigrants into American society.

Illinois is the fifth largest immigrant receiving state in the United States and immigration has dramatically transformed the demographics of rural, suburban, and urban parts of the state. Immigrants accounted for 75% of the population growth in the 1990s in metropolitan Chicago and its nearby suburbs. The total Illinois immigrant population now stands at 1.6 million. This population is a very diverse one - about half Latino, a quarter Asian, and a quarter European - and includes roughly equal numbers of citizens, legal permanent residents, and undocumented individuals.

Challenge
For providing services to populations of this size, there is no substitute for government resources. Integrating such a diverse group of immigrants successfully into American society-with their different legal statuses, cultural norms, levels of English proficiency and education, and access to economic opportunity and government benefits-is a difficult and complex task. The vacuum created by the lack of a federal integration agenda leaves states and localities to figure it out for themselves. Under the right circumstances, there is an opportunity for creative policy making at the state and local level.

In Illinois, a number of factors have come together to provide the right climate for such creative policy making. A historically active immigrant gateway since the late 19th century, Illinois has a strong infrastructure of immigrant advocacy and service organizations in place to mobilize immigrants, advocate for progressive policies, and deliver services on the ground. In addition, Illinois elected officials are receptive to an immigrant integration agenda-voters have elected a number of immigrant state legislators and the governor, Rod Blagojevich, is the son of Serbian immigrants and very supportive of immigrants' rights. The challenge for Illinois advocates was to match a strong existing organizational infrastructure with political will to effect meaningful and lasting change in the lives of immigrants.

Solution
Advocacy leaders in Illinois, led by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), took on this challenge by being strategic and methodical in their approach. They knew it would be necessary to orchestrate a coordinated campaign that would leverage the existing non-profit organizational infrastructure and mobilize the diverse immigrant constituencies in the state - low skill and high tech workers, Latinos, Europeans and Asians, citizens, green card holders and the undocumented. To optimize the use of limited organizing resources, they analyzed the distribution of immigrants around the state, studied demographic data, commissioned reports, conducted political research, and sponsored focus groups. What emerged was a multi-prong strategy.

With respect to the 600,000 or so immigrants in Illinois who had already become citizens, the campaign targeted areas where their numbers were concentrated and developed programs to mobilize them to vote. Using paid field organizers, ICIRR and others registered 33,000 new voters in 2004 and 2005, produced election materials in 8 languages, and turned out numerous volunteers to promote voting on Election Day.

For the undocumented population, also estimated at about 500,000, advocates continue to promote state and local measures to improve their quality of life and access to government services and work towards comprehensive federal reform that would include a path to legalization for the millions of undocumented in the country.

As for the nearly 500,000 legal permanent residents and those soon eligible to naturalize, ICIRR's strategy involved locating them, finding out more about them, and determining what obstacles they faced in becoming citizens in order to overcome those obstacles effectively. Seeking government support to address this population met success in 2004, when Illinois passed the New Americans Initiative, a three-year $9 million program to encourage citizenship. The ambitious program involves a close partnership between ICIRR and the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Designed like a political campaign, the New Americans Initiative combines field and media work. ICIRR supports the work of 50 organizations around the state involved in grass roots organizing, outreach, legal work, or citizenship test preparation. Media work advertises the many workshops people can attend around the state for application preparation and filing. The New Americans Initiative has set ambitious goals-the naturalization of tens of thousands of immigrants in Illinois over three years. These efforts have focused mostly on the Latino community because ICIRR's research indicates that 60% of legal permanent residents in Illinois are Latino and that Latinos are less likely to naturalize than their European and Asian peers. The most difficult issues facing the New Americans Initiative campaign to date involve the labor intensive process of educating immigrants about the benefits of citizenship and the language barriers facing limited English proficient (LEP) individuals who must complete a citizenship test and pass an interview.

The Illinois success story is also due to the receptivity of elected officials and agency heads to promoting a proactive immigrant integration agenda and to the close working relationship advocates have forged with these elected officials. Starting in 2003, ICIRR and others have worked collaboratively with the administration of Rod Blagojevich to enact and implement policies favorable to immigrants, such as adopting in-state tuition for undocumented college students, granting access to preschool to undocumented children, recognizing consular IDs as valid identification, providing comprehensive health insurance for all children regardless of status, and helping eligible Illinois residents naturalize.

Illinois' boldest move, however, came late in 2005 with the issuance of an executive order to promote immigrant integration. This order had been developed over the course of 2005 by ICIRR's leadership and key government officials and, from the beginning, was conceived as a collaborative effort between government and immigrant advocacy leaders. The order recognizes the need for a state immigrant integration policy to enable immigrants to make a speedy transition to self-sufficiency and build on the benefits immigrants bring to their host communities. That Executive Order is discussed more fully in a separate article [LINK].

Lessons Learned
ICIRR capitalized on three strategic pillars which are a precondition for significant policy reform.

·         Strengthen Your Network. Build an infrastructure of strong organizations around the state and mobilize your base, however diverse it may be.

·         Know Your Numbers. Put organizing resources into locations where they will have the greatest impact. Develop strategies based on demographic information and supplement such analysis with field work to fill in gaps and confirm findings.

·         Work to Elect Immigrant Friendly Politicians. Understand your state's power dynamics and seek to mobilize immigrant voters in key locations to elect potential allies. Cultivate relationships with these officials to develop progressively more ambitious measures for immigrants.

For more information about the ICIRR's advocacy efforts, visit ICIRR's website at www.icirr.org. To learn more about the New Americans Initiative, click here.

Part II - A Model Government Program

Background
Illinois has been profoundly altered by a large influx of immigrants in the 1990s.  Its 1.6 million immigrants, representing 12% of the population, provide both low and high skill labor and hail from many parts of the world.  While these immigrants' countries of origin are diverse, ranging from Latin America to Asia and Europe, so too is their immigrant status.  Roughly one-third is comprised of naturalized citizens, another third of legal permanent residents or those soon eligible to be, and the remainder of undocumented immigrants.  Governor Rod Blagojevich, himself the son of Serbian immigrants, took office in early 2003.  He has made immigrant integration one of the pillars of his agenda.  His administration's proactive and systematic approach to this issue serves as a model for the nation, particularly at a time of weak Federal leadership.

Challenge
The challenge facing the Governor has many dimensions.  First, any successful approach must capitalize on the strength of the immigrants' rights movement in the state and build a partnership between government, immigrant organizations, and immigrant leaders.  Second, any major policy change must address the diverse needs of Illinois' immigrant community.  Finally, whether the Illinois initiative is looked upon as a model for states around the country ultimately depends on the details.  Therefore the issue becomes how to implement a progressive and comprehensive integration initiative in a systematic way across all government agencies to produce lasting change.

Solution
The Blagojevich Administration, with support from the state legislature, designed its state immigrant integration policies to solve particular problems faced by immigrants. Beginning in 2003, Illinois put in place measures that would permit undocumented immigrants to benefit from the education and health care systems.  In 2003, the government adopted in-state tuition for undocumented resident students, in effect enacting the state equivalent of the DREAM Act that had been proposed in Congress.  In 2005, the State Board of Education, responding to an appeal from the Governor, approved a rule amendment that granted to undocumented children the right to attend preschools.  The All Kids program, the state's new comprehensive health insurance initiative, will go into effect in July 2006 and cover all children, regardless of immigration status.  In 2004, the state also funded a major partnership with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) and other immigrant service organizations around the state to encourage eligible immigrants to naturalize and increase their civic participation.  This three-year, $9 million program, known as the New Americans Initiative, reports to the Office of Hispanic and Latino Affairs at the Department of Human Services. The naturalization drive is a complex operation, with field and media components. ICIRR staffs the effort, and re-grants a substantial portion of the program funds to approximately fifty organizations around the state. 

Separately, certain high-level agency officials were examining their operations closely with an eye towards improving the services they deliver to all their immigrant clients, whatever their legal status.  For example, Grace Hou, Assistant Secretary for Programs at the Department of Human Services and formerly the executive director of a community-based organization, initiated a program to evaluate how her agency handled limited English proficiency and cultural and linguistic sensitivity issues.  With foundation money, she commissioned a comprehensive report by the Shriver Center on how her agency's services to immigrants could be improved.  That report was completed in early 2006 and her agency is now acting on its recommendations. Among other things, DHS is creating a new Office of Language and Cultural Competence to coordinate language and cultural competency functions agency-wide; it will ensure that its contractors deliver linguistically and culturally competent services; it will make its language assisted services more accessible and uniform; and it is hiring qualified bilingual staff, using trained interpreters, translating vital agency documents, and ensuring linguistic access at key points of customer contact.

Early in 2005, Ms. Hou, Deputy Governor Esther Lopez, and ICIRR Executive Director Joshua Hoyt began discussing how to craft a major immigrant integration initiative that would build on the Blagojevich administration and the legislature's education, health and citizenship efforts.   Hoyt, Lopez, and Hou recognized the need for an integration policy that sent a strong message about the state's commitment to integration while also changing how the state interacted with immigrants in its everyday operations and its programs.  In structuring the initiative, they were mindful to mandate regular consultations with external bodies such as the ICIRR, a National Advisory Council, a New Americans Immigrant Policy Council, and immigrant leaders, to inform decision-making and ensure buy-in.  They also created an Office of New Americans within the Governor's Office to oversee the process.  Their efforts culminated in the issuance of the New Americans Executive Order by Governor Blagojevich in November 2005.  The Executive Order directs every state agency to institute the changes necessary to ensure immigrants are successfully integrated into Illinois society.

Transforming agency practices so immigrant communities feel the difference is an arduous task.  An interagency task force, reporting to the Office of New Americans and established by the Executive Order, brings clusters of agencies together as a group over time. Approximately ten health and human service agencies comprise the first cluster.  Each agency designates a high-level representative with authority to implement change at the agency.  Agency staff are briefed on immigrant demographics and language issues, provided an overview of issues affecting immigrants, and examine whether different agencies treat immigrants consistently. 

While it is too early to evaluate Illinois' success in delivering on its ambitious program to facilitate immigrant integration, it has undeniably put forth the most comprehensive and progressive integration program in the nation.

Lessons Learned
A governor committed to a progressive immigrant agenda, a supportive state legislature and a strong network of immigrant advocacy and service organizations have all made it possible for Illinois to develop model immigrant integration programs and approaches.  However, even under these favorable conditions, the following pitfalls can derail good ideas and good intentions:

·         It's All Important.  It is important to focus on details and the big picture, to think incrementally and in a visionary way.  Both perspectives are essential elements of ushering in major, lasting change.

·         There's a Long Road Ahead.  Immigrant integration is a long term effort: it is critical to stay focused on transforming what is possible at the state level, even with the threat of major federal change looming, to enlist non-profit and foundation partners, and to maintain a high level of energy.

·         Real Change Outlasts Elections.  Institutionalizing the desired changes and reforming the culture at the agency level are essential for changes in service delivery to endure long after elected officials have moved on.

For additional information, contact the Office of New Americans at 312-814-3245 or the Office of Hispanic and Latino Affairs at the Department of Human Services at 312-793-4306.