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Immigration Spring Updates

The Forum continues its state advocacy efforts by engaging state elected officials on passage of the following bills:

1) Student Access bill

2) Immigration Safe Zones Act

3) Illinois Trust Act

Each of these bills speaks to the Forum’s commitment to work with all organizations and allies interested in ensuring that immigrants in Illinois, regardless of their country of origin are recognized as valuable and contributing members of society with equal access to equity and prosperity. For more information on how to support the Forum’s efforts on these bills, contact the Forum’s Assistant Director, Martin Torres.  

Through the Impacto Illinois campaign, the Forum cohosted a digital town hall with Univision Chicago and Que Buena about how recent immigration executive orders impact the community. Panelists included Oscar Chacon, Executive Director of Alianza Americas and Viviana Mendez, an immigration attorney from Erie House. Click HERE for the Forum’s Impacto Illinois page where the town halls are available in English and Spanish.

Image: Immigration experts answering social media audience live questions  

The Forum also conducted in-person briefings for local and state elected officials on the president’s immigration executive orders and the severe deportation memorandums issued by the Department of Homeland Security, “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements” and “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. “The briefings provided an overview of how the executive orders will impact immigrant communities locally and provided concrete actions local leaders can take to mitigate potential impacts on the community.

Image: Latino Policy Forum’s Community Affairs Manager Julian Lazalde briefing state legislators on executive orders regarding immigration 

The Forum continues to engage in the work of the Chicago Immigration Policy Working Group to strengthen the city’s current “Welcoming City Ordinance”. In this time of increased anxiety within immigrant communities, the goal of this group is to ensure the ordinance provides the strongest possible language to ensure immigrants in Chicago have the appropriate protections in place if they happen to be the victims or witnesses to a crime. To learn more about these efforts, please contact Julián Lazalde.

The Immigration team would like to share the following resources for immigrants and immigrant-serving institutions:

Multicultural Leadership Academy Update

The 2016 Multicultural Leadership Academy held its final retreat for this cohort in February. This exceptional group of 23 Latino and African-American leaders continued to grow their understanding of how racial and ethnic groups can be assets to transformational leadership and collaborative social action. The training is designed to contribute to a cohesive network of leaders committed to improving their communities through the establishment of intercultural relationships and trust.

Image: Panelist presenting to Multicultural Leadership Academy participants

Image: Participants presenting their projects

The arts were also employed extensively throughout the training. For the first time the group established a new collaboration with 3Arts, which focuses their work with female artists, artists of color and artists with disabilities; the goal of which is to further enrich their training by highlighting the importance of art as a catalyst for social action and community change. Chicago-area artists provided suggestions for uses of the arts in the curriculum and facilitated workshop sessions. Most recently artists led workshops on “Protest Music” and “Theater of the Oppressed.”

Image: Participants working on artistic component for their projects

Participants continue to work with the affinity groups they formed in October. The goal of the affinity groups is to identify a policy or social issue that its members want to address, with the key criterion of how this issue will improve society, a Chicago neighborhood, or a designated community. With the support of cultural anthropologists from the Field Museum, groups have met regularly to research their topics, design projects, and further their commitment to promoting social change, policy impact, and/or community improvement. Participants will share their projects with civic, business, and philanthropic leaders during their graduation in late May/early June.

Image: Affinity group discussing next steps

For more information on the next year of the Multicultural Leadership Academy, please visit latinopolicyforum.org or contact Jessica Pérez, Project Coordinator at academy@latinopolicyforum.org.

The Forum would like to thank the sponsors who have made this endeavor possible: Allstate Foundation, American Express, The Chicago Community Trust, David and Reva Logan Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Field Foundation and the McCormick Foundation.  

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