Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

Immigrants often maintain ties with their country of origin and contribute financially to these communities. This phenomenon - diaspora philanthropy - is not a new phenomenon but may be evolving. This report by the Migration Policy Institute and USAID explores the myriad actors and motivations contributing to diaspora philanthropy and its interaction with public policy.

The Casey Foundation supported Appleseed in developing a manual that helps protect children and family assets when immigrants are deported. Nearly 5 million children are living in families at risk of separation due to increased immigration enforcement. When these working parents are deported, their U.S.-born children often remain here. The manual helps providers counsel their clients on issues such as establishing child custody, closing a bank account and transferring assets into their children's names. The Mexican government has translated the guide into Spanish and is distributing it through its network of consulates in the United States and Mexico.

In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at the national level, state governments continue to introduce and pass legislation and resolutions addressing immigration and refugee issues. The National Conference of State Legislatures captures the number of bills and resolutions introduced and passed as well as the issues they address on a quarterly basis. This report, focused on the first quarter of 2010, finds a comparable amount of activity to 2009 in state legislatures on the topic of immigration. Of the enacted laws, the majority focused on education, employment, identification/driver’s licenses, law enforcement and resolutions.

More than 5 million children living in the United States today have at least one parent who is an undocumented immigrant. This policy brief analyzes the impact of immigration enforcement on these children and state child welfare agencies. It finds that current policies put children at risk of losing a parent and place unnecessary strain on the child welfare system. It recommends reforms to improve child and family well-being while enforcing immigration law.

This report examines the consequences of parental arrest, detention, and deportation on 190 children in 85 families in six locations across the country. Building on our 2007 report Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children, the current study documents the effects on these children after their parents were arrested in worksite raids, raids on their homes, or operations by local police officers. We researched impacts on children in the days and weeks after parental arrests, in the intermediate and long term while parents were detained or contested their deportation, and in some cases, after parents were deported.
 

This report examines each stage of the immigration removal adjudication system and makes some 60 recommendations for incremental and systemic reform. Designed as a tool for policymakers considering legislative and administrative changes to the immigration system, the study identifies concerns ranging from internal Department of Homeland Security practices to systemic weaknesses within the court’s current structure.