Giving Compass' Take:

• Immigrant communities have been at the forefront of social change, leading organizations that address health, education, workers' rights, and civil rights.

• Are there opportunities in your neighborhood to support immigrants?

• Learn how philanthropists can bolster the pro-immigrants rights movement. 

Immigrant communities have long been at the helm of social change. While there are organizations across the country working to address the needs of immigrants, refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers, many originated with and are led by well-meaning nonimmigrants who may not fully grasp the complex and diverse experiences of the people they serve.

So facing xenophobia, systemic racism, exploitation, and exclusion, immigrants increasingly are organizing for their own interests and on behalf of their own communities. They understand that it takes strength and tenacity to start a new life in a new place and are using these same qualities to create support networks that put their communities first—in areas from health care to education, workers’ rights to civil rights.

Here are some of their stories.

  • Corporate Responsibility
    • In recent years, the #NoTechForICE campaign, run by the Latinx/Chicanx organization, Mijente, has sought to limit ICE’s ability to use technology to help its enforcement. By publicly exposing tech companies that work with ICE, Mijente is making it easier for people to make a conscious decision about the companies with which they choose to do business.
  • Workers’ Rights 
    • Seattle became the first municipality in the country to pass the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which guarantees such rights as a minimum wage and lunch breaks, already standard within the labor sector. Among the groups pushing the initiative was the Seattle chapter of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a broad coalition that has been working to implement such protections across the country.
  • LGBTQIA+ Detention 
    • It goes without saying that LGBTQIA+ immigrants face significant psychological hardship while in detention and after being released. Often they are attacked, assigned to the wrong facility based on gender or denied proper medication while in ICE custody. It was that recognition that led to the creation of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project, which works with immigrant detainees and their families as well as those recently released from detention in the New York Tri-State area.

Read the full article about how immigrants are leading the way by Priscilla Blossom at YES! Magazine.