Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

As the immigration debate continues, the guestworker program continues to be one of the most contentious part of any effort to move federal comprehensive immigration reform.  Many advocates now characterize guestworkers as “indentured.”  But business leaders and numerous elected officials say anything short of expanding the program is a deal breaker:  You can’t have federal reform without a temporary worker program.

The voices missing from the debate have been guestworkers themselves.  Until recently, they’ve been invisible, working across the United States without access to direct participation in the rancorous policy debate about them.  In the last three years, the guestworkers of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast have changed that.  Members of the Alliance of Guestworkers for Dignity (a project of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice) have run campaigns across the South, winning a place at the table in the ongoing debate. 

One group of workers in particular launched a heroic campaign to expose the realities of the guestworker program and promote an alternative vision.  Indian workers trafficked to the US Gulf Coast after Katrina escaped labor camps in 2008.  They embarked on a civil rights journey, travelling by foot from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to bring the guestworker reality to the attention of Congress.  Along the way, they built relationships with African-American communities.  They became the first H2B workers to testify in Congress and won broad support from elected officials, clergy, civil rights leaders, and unions.  They also faced severe retaliation from immigration authorities—and will launch a new phase of their campaign in the coming weeks to expose misconduct by authorities in the Department of Homeland Security.

Firelight Media, an award-winning New York City-based documentary production firm, produced a film highlighting their courageous campaign.  The film focuses on the explicit connections and collaborations between the Indian guestworkers and the post-Katrina African-American community.  This presentation and discussion will start with a viewing of the short film.  The presentation will feature representatives of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and members of the Alliance of Guestworkers.

Lunch will be served.

A Philanthropy New York Members Briefing presented by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Public Interest Projects, the Ford Foundation, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, the Open Society Institute, Unbound Philanthropy, and Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock.

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