(wind blowing) (upbeat music plays) Welcome to "At Issue."

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much, as always, for joining us.

One in seven residents of the State of Illinois is an immigrant; one in seven.

In addition to that, another one in seven, are US born citizens who have at least one immigrant parent.

That's a lot of people in the State of Illinois who have a direct connection to immigration.

And so we'll spend a half hour discussing that with Charlotte Alvarez.

Charlotte is the Executive Director of the Immigration Project, and we probably should define the Immigration Project.

You're based in Bloomington-Normal?

- Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to talk about these topics.

So we're based in Bloomington-Normal, but we have a satellite office in Champagne and we serve 86 counties in central Southern Illinois.

So we have a huge geographic footprint.

And what we're trying to do is partner with immigrant communities for, and provide social and legal services, to help them succeed and prosper here in the US.

- Before we get into some of the specifics of, with the situation in Ukraine, a lot of discussion has come about with regard to refugees.

Could we discuss, just for definition, the difference between an immigrant, a refugee, a student, a temporary worker?

What are the different nuances of those names?

- Yeah, so immigration is a really broad category and immigrants could have a whole bunch of different statuses here in the US.

Refugees are fleeing abroad for some reason, some crisis in their country.

So example the war in Ukraine, or it might be sometimes there's, we talk about, climate change or other reasons why people have to leave their homes.

And they're designated as a refugee outside the US through a legal process, and then come into the United States with that designation And they're provided some extra protection and services.

And then other types of immigrants, there's people who are here just for temporary reasons.

So students, or visitors, so we have millions of visitors every year; those are temporary immigrants.

And then we have people who are trying to find a more permanent place in the US.

So legal, permanent residents have some protections, are able to stay here, but they have restrictions on travel abroad and how long they can be abroad, up into people who are here on work visas or are here on temporary protected status, or have DACA, so people can have a whole different, different reasons for being here, different timelines and different statuses and be part of this kind of broad category of immigrants.

- Does refugee fit under that, or is it a very temporary thing and they're expected to go back to their home country once things are resolved?

- Usually refugee resettlement is permanent.

Some people might decide to go back if things are resolved, but the goal is to find permanent resettlement here in the US.

So, and we've had waves of refugees and the US determines how many refugees each year they're going to accept up from abroad.

And then people are kind of in partnership with the United Nations, UN HCR; they're determined to be refugees, the US decides how many to accept and they're offered places in the US and that number's been really low for the last several years and then it's been increasing recently under the new administration.

- You offer a lot of legal services, but before we talk about those, I'd like to talk a little bit about the acclimation of an immigrant, for those that are going to be here and, and eventually seeking citizenship, there's still this, you know, this cultural difference.

And you've developed something called the Welcoming Center.

What does that offer?

- So Welcoming Center is, is pretty new.

We just developed it in the last couple years and it's home, it is in Bloomington-Normal and right now the Welcoming Center is focusing in on the residents in McLean County.

And the goal is really to help to be more welcoming, right?

When you move to a new place then there's a lot you need to know and learn, and so our goal is, one, to partner with immigrants and help provide them connections and services and community, and then also partner with members of the community already to help make that a more welcoming space.

So what can we do to make our government, and our religious institutions, and our social services, and our community, more accepting and welcoming so that we can better partner together?

- Is this an effort to reach out to other agencies so that there are multiple services provided that you don't do at all at the Welcoming Center through The Immigration Project, but you reach out to other organizations and have this coordinated effort to welcome the immigrants?

- Right.

So we're not going to take on all services and we're not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we're trying to kind of make sure that immigrants have an equal ability to access our communities and have that extra hand for welcoming.

So if we see a agency, or government institution, or any initiative we'll kind of come to the table and say, "Have you provided language access?"

Or, "Have you thought about how the immigrant community can access those services?"

So, for example, in COVID relief, Bloomington had, the city had a fund for COVID relief.

And then we talked to the city about, "Have you made sure that that's also available to immigrant communities?"

So really we're trying to look at anywhere someone is doing something, let's make sure everyone has a seat at the table and is accepted into that space.

- The services that you provide at The Immigration Project, much of it is legal, and it's to help people access whether they wanna become a citizen, or, for instance, there's a green card.

What is a green card?

Is that a temporary situation?

- So a green card is another way of saying someone's a legal, permanent resident.

The cards were green like 20 years ago.

And we just kind of kept the name and they were pink for a while, but we still call 'em green cards because that color was so distinctive.

So if someone is a legal, permanent resident, then it's permanent.

They, for the rest of time, they could be a permanent resident and then they can get on the path to citizenship after they've had the green card for a certain number of years, they could apply for citizenship.

Or they can't, depending on what they wanna do and their desires.

And they can travel abroad, but they can't go abroad for more than six months in a trip.

So there's some restrictions, but there's more stability once you're at the green card stage.

- So you could live in the United States for the rest of your life, under green card status and not seek citizenship?

- Yeah.

There's a bunch of people who became green cards, holders, in the 80s and 90s who wanna keep their citizenship in their country of origin, keep those ties, but want their permanent home in the US and their permanent residence.

- Let's talk about DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

An awful lot of discussion about it.

Where are we with with DACA?

What kinds of services do you provide?

How serious of a problem do we have?

- Yeah.

So DACA was created by President Obama, basically as a response to the failure to pass the Dream Act, which would be a legislative fix for people with DACA to get to permanent residency and citizenship.

And DACA by itself is temporary.

So you have DACA, and then you have to renew it every two years for the rest of time.

And if the DACA program goes away, that status goes away.

So initially there were 750,000 people with DACA and there's been this huge political and court battle over DACA.

So right now, the due to a Supreme Court decision, and then some administrative action, the initial applications are blocked.

So we've had people, we know there's people, we talked to people, who are eligible for DACA, but they can't apply because it's not available anymore.

And, but you can renew it if you had have gotten it earlier, before the program was blocked.

So we're doing DACA renewals for people.

And at this point, you know, DACA started in 2012, so people have had had DACA for over 10 years.

And they're just waiting for something more permanent in a legislative fix to being in this limbo.

- And this was developed for young people who came with their parents or a guardian and they had to, I mean, it wasn't for adults that came in?

- Right.

And some people came with a guardian, some people came on their own, but they had to have been a minor when they entered.

So they're under 15 years old and then they've lived in the United States; they just came when they were children through no fault of their own and now have no legal status.

- What, what issues lead to an immigrant being removed from the country, in general?

Because we know that there are people who come to Illinois and undocumented seems to be the proper term these days.

- That's it.

- But you don't automatically say, well, "Hi, I'm here.

Thanks for helping me get a green card, or go into DACA, or obtain naturalization."

Why would people in central Illinois be told they had to go back to their home country?

- Yeah.

So I appreciate you using the term undocumented.

So we don't say illegal.

One, no human being is illegal.

And two, it's not accurate: being undocumented is not a criminal offense in the United States.

So we don't use that term.

We use undocumented cause it's more accurate, right?

And so people can be, one, people can be undocumented for a lot of different reasons.

Some people never had status and, like people with DACA, entered when they were young.

Some people fall out of status.

So we've talked to clients who were here on a student visa, for example, and then something happened with their family finances and they can't afford to continue to study and they can't afford to go home and they've created roots here and so they might fall outta status and become undocumented.

Some people, are, have a status and they lose it.

So people become undocumented for all sorts of reasons.

And then what could cause someone to be removed?

Well, we have this Immigration Nationality Act, which rules our immigration sphere.

And it's, it's very convoluted and it's very detail oriented and there's a lot of ways for people to become ineligible for something, or fall off, or not have a path forward.

Or the wait list is so long that it's impossible so some categories have backlogs of over a hundred years.

So you could be in the line to get status, but you're just still in line and that doesn't give you protection so some of those individuals end up facing removal if ICE discovers they're here undocumented.

And then there's a whole list of ineligibility or reasons why people could, even permanent residents, anyone with any type of status other than citizenship could face removal.

It, depending on the circumstances.

So certain criminal convictions or certain issues with their actions here in the United States could cause someone to be removable.

But we have such a backlog in our Immigration Removal Courts right now we have over a million dollars, sorry, over a million people who are in removal, proceedings; millions and millions of dollars spent on attempting to remove people, and some of those people, have been in the US for nearly their entire lives.

- Charlotte made reference to ICE.

I think we're all familiar with the term ICE, but it does stand for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

- Yes.

- There is a limitation now.

There was a lawsuit, an Illinois lawsuit, that went through the courts.

And describe the result of that lawsuit, that limits ICE's capabilities.

- Yeah.

So this was a lawsuit brought on by the National Immigrant Justice Center.

I think it's Castañon Nava versus Department of Homeland Security, and N I J C did really excellent work on this lawsuit.

And really we're, they're not creating new limits on ICE.

They're enforcing the constitutional limits that should have been there, and ICE should have been following from the beginning.

So the police, ICE, all of our government agencies have to follow the constitution, right?

The fourth amendment and rules on search and seizure.

And we have to treat people with respect and treat people with the rights that they have given been given in the constitution.

And we all have those rights, regardless of status.

So this lawsuit was brought because ICE was violating people's constitutional rights when doing traffic stops that were unwarranted and now there's more enforcement on that to make sure that they're following the rules, right?

If they're asking immigrants to follow the rules, they need to be following the rules and the constitution when they're enforcing those laws.

- Let's stay on the legislative angle for a while.

Several years ago, then Governor Rauner signed legislation that made Illinois a sanctuary state.

What, what is a sanctuary state?

And we talk a lot about sanctuary cities, San Francisco, et cetera.

But what exactly does that mean?

- So sanctuary is one of those terms that's so hard to define because every time it's used as something different.

So, "What does that mean?"

is a totally valid question.

Like, I don't know, right?

No one knows.

So sanctuary city ordinances, every single one is different and it does a little bit of a different thing.

And then what governor Rauner signed, or the Trust Act did parts of a sanctuary policy and didn't really get all the way there.

But basically, the idea between all of these sanctuary movements, the central idea is that we have federal officials to enforce federal laws and we have state and local officials to enforce state and local laws, and they don't need to be working together, right?

And it's actually better for our state and local officials if they are not associated with immigration officials.

So the Trust Act is kind of says that, one, that state officials and police agencies have to comply with victims and survivors of crime who are trying to get status based on helping the police.

There's this thing called a U visa, but you can't get the U visa unless the police help you.

So if someone has helped the police in an investigation, then the police should have to help them back in kind of affirming that they did that.

So there's some protections about working on U visas.

And then the other part is saying that that, again, ICE has to follow the rules and the laws, and so if ICE ask a local official to detain someone, just because of their immigration status, then they need a judicial warrant to do that.

And their local government, isn't going to hold someone for longer just because ICE asks, that they need to go through the right procedures and get a warrant and, and have the judge ask someone to be detained.

So it doesn't do everything of a sanctuary.

It not like there's these borders of Illinois and then no one can be deported from our, from that zone.

It's just saying, let's, let's break this down a little bit and say, ICE has to go through the proper judicial channels and isn't gonna have these back channels where they're cooperating with local agencies.

And then the you're undermining the trust with the police, with the immigrant community, by creating those extra bonds between the police and ICE.

- Do, does the immigration project have to work in coordination with officials, whether that be ICE officials or, or others in terms of a deportation?

- Yeah, so we do removal of defense and we also, like I said, do a lot of U visas.

So if some.

- But I, I don't think I understand a U visa.

You mentioned that and it.

- That, so that's the main way we cooperate with other officials.

So if someone let's say someone is a survivor of domestic violence, right?

The, there's so many barriers to, usually women, sometimes men are survivors, but usually a woman coming forward and reporting that, and then enforcing, you know, the law on that.

So a survivor of domestic violence might feel a lot of guilt or shame, might feel like they're not going to be listened to, or they might feel that, especially immigrants, that there might be a language barrier, or they might feel that if they talk to the police, if they're undocumented, maybe they're going to end up, that's gonna be communicated to ICE and that it could end up in their own deportation.

When really what they're trying to do is kind of tell their story and it, and put the perpetrator of that domestic violence in jail.

So, in order to kind of build up that trust between immigrant communities and the police, there's this U visa.

So if that survivor comes forward and reports domestic violence, and the police sign this certification saying, "Yes, that survivor, came forward and reported what happened to her," then we can go and apply for legal protection and get that person out of being undocumented and getting legal status based on the fact that they helped the police do their job and helped in a cooperation, and cooperated in an investigation.

- So I, I understood the process, but I think you threw in U visa and I'm.

- I know there's like 50 different types of visa.

So that really helps us make those links between the police.

- We talked about Governor Rauner signing some legislation.

Let's talk about a bill that was signed by Governor Pritzker.

It's called the Illinois Way Forward.

It involves limiting the detention of ICE detainees.

There was a lawsuit, and I don't think that lawsuit's been resolved, but what did, I mean, Illinois became one of only four states to initiate this situation where you cannot hold ICE detainees in a county or a private jail.

And I know that that's, I've seen a change, you know, depending on what court is looking at it, what does that mean?

- So we had three counties who were contracting to ICE to sell beds within their county jails to ICE officials.

So what, well, in these three jails, there's Pulaski, Kankakee, and McKenry counties had these facilities.

So you'll example in Kankakee, the jail is there to house people seeking who are going through the criminal process, right?

People who have been arrested, and accused of a crime, it's usually supposed to be temporary so it doesn't have a lot of the same facilities as a long term prison.

And it's people who are in some sort of criminal punishment, right?

So people who might be violent, might be dangerous, might whether they're going through a criminal proceeding, and then they'll contract some of those beds in space within that jail to ICE.

So then, and immigrants sometimes might have a criminal record, but might no, right?

You might have someone who was pulled over for a traffic violation and is undocumented and now they're in a jail facility in, pending and removal proceedings and removal proceedings could take a significant time.

There's some people who are in detention, immigrant detention, that's non-criminal, for years, sometimes decades, depending on their circumstances.

So the law from the, the Way Forward was to try to, again, break down those connections and say, jails are really supposed to be for county services.

They're not supposed to be contracting to ICE and holding people who are not part of any criminal proceeding.

Removal is a civil proceeding.

It's not criminal.

And so they're, they're divesting and saying that those county facilities really should only be for the county and not sold to ICE and putting those people through detention.

- And I assume by using the word sold to ICE, this is a money making proposition for those counties.

- Yes, yes.

Usually the counties are making a lot of money.

Although then when you consider the cost of the facilities, then all of the additional costs and kind of the moral cost of them, it is kind of debatable whether they come out ahead.

- Quite some time ago, the State of Illinois expanded the Medicaid Program for Low Income Families to include immigrants.

That's still in effect?

- Yes.

- What, do you work with that?

- Yeah, we've done some in our social services we do a lot of information sessions that are trying to help immigrants understand what benefits are available and where the restrictions are, and where there's, those restrictions have been lifted.

So we've done some information sessions to try to get the word out to the community.

And it's a great benefit for people, right?

Medical needs aren't dependent on status.

People have medical needs regardless.

And if people have no health insurance, no other access to care, well there's so many studies have shown that that's becomes an issue for emergency services.

And if people can't get that preventative care, that becomes acute and emergency care and it's worse for everyone.

So I think that it's better for the immigrant community.

It's better for our overall healthcare system to have them have the same access to care as everyone else.

- One of the concerns for at least a portion of our population with regard to immigrants is that they come into our country and are taking our jobs.

From your perspective, have you seen much evidence of that?

- No.

And I think part of the problem with that is the narrative of us versus them, right?

That immigrants are somehow different from us.

And what you talked about at the beginning, there's a lot of people in mixed status families that have immigrants in their communities that they know and love that are, that are their sons and daughters and husbands and wives.

And there's not really us versus them, right?

And immigrants also have higher rates of entrepreneurship.

If you think about what's, how much grit and determination do you need to have to uproot your entire life and move to a new country and then make that your home?

We're benefiting from that entrepreneurship and that that drive and spirit.

And that makes our whole economy stronger when we have those workers in it.

So I don't think that that's an issue.

- And a final thought on family reunification, you alluded to people who were born here, but their parents are immigrants, et cetera.

I assume you have worked with immigrants that might be legally in jeopardy of being removed from the country, even though their children might be here, and not just DACA, but.

- Yes.

So I think that one of the myths we see when in talking about immigrants is the idea that, "Oh, if you marry a US citizen, then you just kind of automatically get status," right?

That kind of like by magic you have some in, but there's a really complicated legal process that goes on there that we help people, guide people through.

But especially for parents, the there's bars and restrictions for a lot of folks.

So some people can benefit by a petition, but that child needs to be at least 21 years old in order to file anything.

And then they need to meet all these other requirements.

So that's definitely an issue.

And we've seen that, we'll have have kids in our school system who are worried about whether their mom and dad are going to be deported, right?

And it's a big issue.

- How many clients do you have at the immigration project?

- On our legal side, we have about 500 cases.

And then on our social services side, we've helped over 700 clients this year.

So we, we help depending you know about 1500 people a year, and then we reach through community presentations and other services, a couple thousand, of 5,000 a year in community presentations.

- Charlotte Alvarez, Executive Director of The Immigration Project in Bloomington-Normal, thank you so much for joining us on "At Issue."

- Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

- And we'll be back next time with another addition of, "At Issue," this time we're gonna be talking about how do we resolve the issue of bullying in schools?

We'll have representatives from a large school district and a small district, to discuss bullying on the next, "At Issue."

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