Cities Have Moved Ahead to Welcome, Integrate Immigrants
Cities Have Moved Ahead to Welcome, Integrate Immigrants
A new report by AS/COA, Welcoming America, and USC's CSII finds 26 cities across the U.S. are bucking the anti-immigrant mood by working to integrate immigrants in their communities.
At least 26 cities across the country are bucking the country's anti-immigrant mood by working to integrate immigrants in their communities through official offices within their municipal government, a report released Tuesday finds.
In addition, cities have created another 37 bodies - task forces, commissions and welcoming offices - to promote immigrant integration, according to the report released as part of the National Immigrant Integration Conference ongoing in New York.
Officials in cities such as Nashville, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and Miami have moved past the inaction on immigration reform at the federal level and created their own approaches to immigrants living in their communities or whom they want to attract to their communities.
"While our national politics is incredibly dysfunctional, a lot of our local governments end up being oriented around problem solving and moving forward," said Manuel Pastor, one of the authors of "Opening Minds, Opening Doors, Opening Communities: Cities Leading for Immigrant Integration."
"You can talk about deporting 11 million people, but it's pretty hard to do. You can talk about banning Muslims, but it's constitutionally problematic," said Pastor, who heads the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) at USC. "You can imagine all these schemes at a state level, but at a local level people find immigrants are their neighbors, they are their workers, they are an important part of the community - so the question is how do we bubble up this local cooperation and wisdom," he said.
The Americas Society/Council of the Americas and Welcoming America were collaborators on the report....
