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Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar, "BIPOC Communities' Response to Rising White Nationalism" here, including program recording and powerpoint.
Join us for the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s Legal Services Working Group, where we discuss how we can continue to strengthen the legal services infrastructure in California. Note that Legal Services Working Group meetings are only open to grantmaking institutions and philanthropic advisors.
In 2022 GCIR adopted a policy agenda informed by input from immigrant justice movement leaders, GCIR members, and other stakeholders. The agenda aims to address the challenges that deny individuals the freedom to stay, move, work, transform, and thrive, and reflects potential solutions identified by the immigrant justice movement for addressing these challenges.
In this edition, GCIR President Marissa Tirona speaks with Arcenio Lopez, Executive Director of Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP). Read on as Arcenio shares his thoughts about building power for Indigenous immigrants, the importance of forging alliances with other Indigenous communities, and how philanthropy can support and strengthen the work of Indigenous migrants.
Building on the legacy of Queer and Trans elders and pioneers, LGBTQ immigrant and refugee leaders continue to lead the fight for societal transformation. For years, these leaders have advocated for increased funding to support LGBTQ immigrant communities, particularly to address lack of access to medical care and asylum and detention issues (including sexual assault). A 2017 Congressional inquiry found that LGBTQ immigrants are 97 times more likely to be sexually victimized than non-LGBTQ people while in ICE custody. However, LGTBQ immigrant issues continue to receive less funding when compared to overall dollar amounts invested in LGBTQ communities.
Over the last two decades, waves of immigrants have made rural communities their homes. According to the Pew Research Center, from 2000 to 2018 immigrants accounted for 37 percent of overall rural population growth. Driven by demand for labor in the argricultural, meat packing, and dairy processing industries, this growth has led to an economic revival of parts of rural America where communities were once on the decline.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR Webinar, "Strategies for Advancing Pro-immigrant Policies", here, including recording and powerpoint.
In her latest quarterly message, GCIR president Marissa Tirona lays out what is at stake for DACA recipients as the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals considers deeming DACA unlawful, a decision that would leave nearly 700,000 of our DACAmented families, neighbors, and friends unable to legally work and at risk of deportation. Marissa also shares what immigrant justice advocates are doing to protect and defend DACA at this critical juncture, and explains how philanthropy can help fight both to protect DACA and to ensure we are prepared for its possible end.
In this conversation, we'll here from Houston-area leaders who will share their strategies for welcoming newcomers to the region despite the Texas State government's hostility to immigrants and communities of color. We'll also explore how funders can support the work being done in Houston and beyond to welcome immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
Join GCIR and leading voices in the immigrant justice movement for this special strategy session where we will explore what can be done to support DACA holders during this uncertain time, addressing challenges such as the mental health impacts of the constant threats to the program, potential future workforce participation challenges, and the possible loss of other benefits such as driver's licenses and in-state tuition. We will also explore the narrative, legislative, and deportation defense strategies being pursued by advocates.
Soon after the U.S. government’s hasty and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, the United States received over 80,000 Afghan evacuees, many of whom were at added risk due to their association with the U.S. government during the two-decade war. Ninety percent of these migrants entered the country on humanitarian parole (HP), which allows them to live and work in the U.S. for two years, but does not provide a path to permanent residency, leaving them in legal limbo. The Afghan Adjustment Act (AAA), would allow Afghans with humanitarian parole to apply for permanent legal status and would expand the categories of Afghans eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs).
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar, "Queer & Trans Leadership and the Fight for LGBTQ Migrant Rights" here, including the program recording and powerpoint.
Find all program-related materials for GCIR Webinar, "Building Immigrant & Worker Power in Rural America."
Join us for the quarterly meeting of GCIR’s Delivering on the Dream (DOTD) network, which has included 27 state and local funding collaboratives in 21 states supporting 700+ grantees, investing needed resources to protect and defend the rights of immigrants and refugees. Composed of local sites linked by a national network, collaborative members are diverse in geographic focus, priorities, and strategies.
Join us for the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s Legal Services Working Group, where we discuss how we can continue to strengthen the legal services infrastructure in California. Note that Legal Services Working Group meetings are only open to grantmaking institutions and philanthropic advisors.
Join the next quarterly meeting of GCIR’s California Immigrant Integration Initiative, which facilitates funder engagement, funding coordination and alignment, and member-led initiatives, creating opportunities for funders to leverage the collective impact of their grantmaking and fortify the immigration funding field in California. CIII is comprised of statewide, regional, and local funders from across the state.
As discussed in GCIR’s program, Building Immigrant & Worker Power in Rural America, immigrants and refugees add to the diversity of rural communities and help mitigate the negative impacts of a rapidly aging population while also enlivening local economies. The availability of work in manufacturing and agriculture has contributed to the considerable growth of immigrant populations in these communities, with nearly 75% of all farmworkers in the United States being foreign-born.
Racial capitalism is one of the major factors that inflicts harm upon – and withholds power and resources from – people and communities who seek to stay, move freely, work, transform, and thrive. GCIR is focused on moving money and power to immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeker communities and movement groups. Understanding the proportion of philanthropic dollars that go to the immigrant justice movement is crucial to this advocacy. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has documented the state of philanthropic funding for immigrant and refugee communities, and offers crucial recommendations for grantmakers who hope to liberate philanthropic assets in support of these communities.
Philanthropy has often conflated narrative change work with strategic communications, one-directional communications campaigns, or story projects that may have short-term effects but fail to transform cultural norms. Instead, narrative change means shifting our world view. As Pop Culture Collaborative’s Bridgit Antoinette Evans shares, narratives are all around us, “influencing everything about how we live, see, and think about ourselves in the world.” Narrative change involves the creation of a new story and communicating that story to audiences in ways that resonate with them, putting the new narrative into practice, and evaluating the efforts of that narrative shift and adapting it accordingly. The goal is to transform “the ecosystems of narratives, ideas, and cultural norms that shape the behaviors, mindsets, and worldviews of millions of people” – to transform “whole narrative oceans.”
Find all program-related materials for GCIR's webinar "Welcoming Houston: Providing Support to new Immigrants in Texas" here, including session recording and powerpoint.