Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

The Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), which serves the St. Paul-Minneapolis area and the surrounding multi-county regions, addresses four assumptions that have threatened to derail grantmaking efforts in new immigrant and refugee communities and offers strategies for funding immigrant and refugee artists and communities.

Though comprising only 10 percent of annual immigration to the U.S., refugees are a distinct component of the foreign-born population in many metropolitan areas. Using data from the Census and the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, this report examines where refugees come from and where they land, finding that refugee destinations have shifted away from typical immigrant gateways housing large foreign-born populations to newer, often smaller, places.

The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA) of 1998 authorized certain Haitian nationals and their dependents to adjust their status to lawful permanent residence. Through September 30, 2005, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), formerly part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), had received a total of 39,524 HRIFA applications and had approved 14,050.

The new management manual seeks to provide information for the decision-making process for creating or expanding an immigration legal services program.  It contains knowledgeable insights on the structure of high-quality and financially stable programs from staffing to outreach and advocacy work.

This sidebar features the accomplishments of the state of Illinois through the federally funded Refugee Children School Impact Grant (RCSIG) program. In addition, two examples of this programming are provided: the World Relief's "Youth Services Program" in Aurora and DuPage, Illinois; and the Louisville Catholic Charities "Transitional Schooling Program" serving the Jefferson County School District, Kentucky.

The BRYCS Spotlight provides an overview of the ways in which the No Child Left Behind Act may affect the education of refugee students. This month there are three featured searches that list resources addressing the following topics as they relate specifically to refugee children and the schools: (1) the No Child Left Behind Act, (2) teaching strategies and resources, and (3) conflict resolution.

Reports on the 80,000 unaccompanied alien children who seek entry to the United States every year with only a fraction of those children remaining in the country. The rest are deported, typically within 72 hours. Many children are detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they attempt to enter a port of entry or cross the border.

Each year, 50,000 to 90,000 refugees are resettled throughout the United States. The influx of new people, cultures, and ideas revitalizes some communities, but also strains others as organizations and foundations seek to incorporate the new populations into their communities. Written by a refugee personally familiar with the American systems, the author seeks to help consultants, foundations, congregations, nonprofits, and government agencies understand what the refugee experience is like in the United States, and what agencies can do to be more effective.

Presents the 44th annual edition focusing on the issue of refugee warehousing in this year's Survey; using a methodology that rates countries' policies on refoulement, detention, right to earn a livelihood and freedom of movement and residence. USCRI adopted this system both to track policy changes and to motivate countries to improve their ratings by increasing refugees' access to rights.

The World Refugee Survey 2006 reveals that the number of refugees in the world has increased to 12 million largely due to instability in Iraq. The Middle East and Africa continued to host the largest number of refugees, and two-thirds of the world’s refugees remained warehoused: deprived of basic human rights established in the 1951 Refugee Convention for five years or more.