https://www.fcd-us.org/blog-working-across-silos-and-in-community-to-support-children-of-immigrants/
“At the end of the day, we do it for our children. For them and their future — it makes it all worth it.”
These words are from an immigrant father in Mississippi whose family was torn apart by an immigration worksite raid; he was reflecting on the hardships he has endured in leaving his country, confronting anti-immigrant policies, and suffering exploitative working conditions.
His is a sentiment felt by so many parents across the country — including our own. As daughters of Mexican immigrants, we recognize the sacrifices our parents made to ensure a better future for us, often with very limited resources. Unfortunately, today we see too many immigrant families facing similar struggles: harsh policies that restrict access to the basic supports that help families thrive.
As leaders of the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition (PIF) and Children Thrive Action Network (CTAN), we use a multifaceted approach to address these systemic barriers. Two key aspects include building strong cross-sector alliances and bringing in the voices of immigrant families to inform our policy priorities.
Strong Cross-Sector Alliances to Advance Advocacy Goals
PIF was established in response to a dire threat to immigrants’ access to benefits. While immigrant families have historically faced harmful policies, the years under the Trump Administration posed some of the most significant threats in recent history. Parents of U.S. citizens were deported, anti-immigrant rhetoric created a climate of fear, and new barriers to health care and other critical supports were erected.
The Trump Administration’s “public-charge rule,” which would have drastically changed longstanding policy by making it harder for immigrants with low incomes or those who use certain public benefits to qualify for immigrant visas or a green card, almost immediately created a chilling effect — even months before the rule was published. Immigrants were afraid to enroll themselves or their children in health care, nutrition, and other critical programs.
PIF’s broad-based membership — a robust, diverse coalition of 700 national, state, and local organizations working in health, nutrition, anti-poverty, faith, children’s advocacy, and immigrant rights — made it possible for more than a quarter million public comments to be submitted in response to Trump’s public charge rule. The effort helped delay the rule’s implementation and laid the groundwork for the litigation efforts that ultimately led to the rule being overturned.
Similarly, CTAN was created in response to the multifaceted policy attacks facing children in immigrant families under Trump, again bringing together a diverse set of organizations working on a wide range of children’s issues. When CTAN officially launched in April 2020, one of its first collective tasks was to ensure that immigrant families were included in the federal government’s pandemic response, such as securing access to stimulus payments for children in mixed-status families.
Both PIF and CTAN are unique in that we have been successful in bringing together organizations that historically have not worked on immigration policy. We are leveraging the diverse expertise and influence of our membership to achieve policy wins for immigrant families.
Bringing in the Voices of Immigrants to Inform Policy Priorities
Immigrant communities have always been critical to advocacy, whether it be sharing their stories about the effects of policy, identifying policy gaps, or organizing in community to support families impacted by deportation. When advocacy and coalition leaders fully recognize that all people — especially those we are advocating for — have the power to claim their right to a healthy life for themselves and their families, it allows for immigrants themselves to shape and drive the advocacy agenda.
To consider such a shift, CTAN began working with United Parent Leaders Action Network (UPLAN) in early 2022 to explore ways to better engage immigrant parents in our advocacy efforts. It was clear that CTAN’s coalition structure and working groups were not easy spaces for parents without policy expertise to participate in.
We realized we needed to do things differently if we wanted to meaningfully partner with parents, and we needed to start by “moving at the speed of trust,”
including slowing down to gather information from parents themselves and including them in our strategy discussions.
So we spent half a year conducting listening sessions with immigrant parents, youth, and children across the country to hear about their most pressing concerns. The feedback from those listening sessions is now helping CTAN build its advocacy agenda for 2024 and beyond.
In addition, we’re thinking through new ways to push for some of CTAN’s long-term priorities. One mechanism we’re exploring, to ensure that parents are engaged from strategy design to execution, is a parent fellowship focused on immigration policy advocacy.
At PIF, we have just begun to explore what the inclusion of immigrant families in our policy and systems-change strategies will entail. We are in the middle of a re-visioning process that, similar to CTAN, has included listening sessions with immigrant communities.
In this journey, we have learned that inclusion means building the collective power of communities alongside organizational partners to advance policy initiatives that challenge the norms of the advocacy world.
Just one example: it was the leadership of undocumented youth that persuaded Texas state legislators to change policy on in-state tuition. Prior to this, undocumented students who attended and graduated from a Texas high school were required to pay out-of-state tuition — up to triple the cost of in-state tuition — to attend a Texas college or university. Undocumented youth were central in strategic conversations with advocacy partners and legislators. The direct involvement of undocumented youth, coupled with the collaboration of diverse state actors, led Texas to become the first state in the nation to pass an in-state tuition bill in 2001.
Cases like these have taught us that a policy advocacy strategy cannot be built only by policy experts, advocacy gurus, and executives; it needs to include immigrants who have firsthand experience, who have the most to gain and lose. At both the CTAN and PIF retreats in 2023, we included this diversity of people in the room. The conversation was richer, the strategies more innovative, and the decisions harder to make. But we know that in order to change systems, narratives, ineffective policies, and power in the United States, we need to be bold.
Creating opportunities, rather than harsh cruelties, for immigrants requires a multifaceted approach:
- strong alliances working across silos,
- a comprehensive advocacy strategy,
- stories that win hearts and minds,
- long-term investments that outlive the current urgent issues, and
- the authentic strategic direction that comes from including immigrant voices.
Looking Forward
Similar to the Trump years, immigrants and their families are once again caught in the middle of a debate that too often overlooks the harm of policy decisions on their well-being. Recent anti-immigrant policies directly compromise children’s health and safety, including new laws like SB4 in Texas and SB 1798 in Florida, as well as federal proposals to drastically alter our asylum and immigration system. We also are working to counteract the ongoing chilling effect of Trump-era policies while bracing for what threats may come in a heated election year.
One-fourth of all children in the United States live in immigrant families.
We simply cannot build a brighter future for the nation without a current environment where children in immigrant families thrive.
We must address our nation’s legacy of structural racism and the harms facing children in immigrant families if we are to build a welcoming and inclusive society where immigrant heritage is respected and where every child has the resources they need.
As mothers, and as leaders committed to a more inclusive and just country for all children, we know there is simply too much at stake not to.
This is the fourth blog in the Foundation’s Social Justice for Young Children Conversation Series exploring what it means to pursue social justice for young children and their families.
About the Authors
Wendy Cervantes is director of immigration and immigrant families at The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). In this role, she oversees the organization’s cross-team work to develop and advocate for policies that support low-income immigrants and their families. She is an expert on the cross-sector policy issues that impact children of immigrants, including economic security, child welfare, immigration, education, health care, and human rights.
Prior to joining CLASP, Ms. Cervantes was vice president of immigration and child rights at First Focus where she led the organization’s federal policy work on immigration and established the Center for the Children of Immigrants. Ms. Cervantes also served as director of programs at La Plaza, a Latino community-based organization in central Indiana, where she oversaw the implementation and evaluation of education, health, and social service programs. Earlier in her career, Ms. Cervantes worked at the Annie E. Casey Foundation where she managed the national immigrant and refugee families and the District of Columbia portfolios. She also has experience as a community organizer and an adult ESL instructor.
The proud daughter of Mexican immigrants, Ms. Cervantes holds an M.A. in Latin American studies and political science from the University of New Mexico and a B.A. in communications from the University of Southern California.
Adriana Cadena is the Protecting Immigrant Families (PIF) campaign director. She has led the growth of the PIF campaign to a robust national coalition of over 650 member organizations at the intersection of immigration and public benefits working to increase and expand access for immigrant families. Adriana provides leadership on the coalition’s strategic programmatic direction, policy priorities, community engagement initiatives, coalition building, narrative building, and operations. Adriana drives PIF strategic planning and she is responsible for fundraising to achieve PIF’s vision, mission, and goals.
With over 20 years of experience in advancing the well-being of low-income immigrants through organizing, advocacy, and organizational leadership, Adriana grounds herself on the everyday challenges faced by her community on the U.S.-Mexico border and her own experience as an undocumented immigrant child growing up in a small Texas town.
Adriana holds a bachelor’s in foreign service from Georgetown University and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley.