The Pennsylvania Immigration Citizenship Coalition (PICC) is a statewide pro immigration community advocacy organization. PA NOW Vice-President Michele Hamilton attended their first statewide coalition meeting in Harrisburg March 22-23. Many areas of Pennsylvania are represented in the coalition, and participant countries of origin include Mexico, Guatamala, Vietnam, Bhutan, Iraq, Dominican Republic, Albania, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ecuador, Jamaica, China, Venezuela, Nigeria and Indonesia. Last year, PICC fought 21 anti-immigrant bills in the General Assembly.
The largest refugee population is in Philadelphia but there are also substantial refugee populations in Erie, Allegheny, Lackawanna, Dauphin, and Lancaster counties. 65,000 people in Pennsylvania are eligible for DAPA (Deferred Action for Parental Accountability) or DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) also known as the Dream Act.
17 Pennsylvania counties will not honor Immigration Custom and Enforcement (ICE) holds, per a written policy. Pittsburgh Mayor’s Office has a “Welcoming Pittsburgh” committee that pulls people from various immigrant communities to give the Mayor’s office a more accurate idea of the issues that effect various immigrant communities and their contribution to the city. Philadelphia has ordinances that protect immigrants from fraud, increase language access, and prohibit the inquiry into immigration status for emergency or medical services. The Mayor has an Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs.
Immigrant communications are hampered by their lack of language access, ESL classes that are not culturally competent, engaging or contextualized, a basic lack of services infrastructure, racism and xenophobia especially in employment, housing, public accommodations, and barriers to transportation. On top of that add police profiling and a lack of knowledge on the part of service workers to know how to help them. And while some immigrants did choose to come to the US, many were pushed out of their country for political reasons.
Pennsylvania NOW is working with PICC to create a more immigrant-friendly Pennsylvania by supporting funding for immigrant services including Section 8 vouchers, helping increase voter registration of new citizens (PICC has registered over 25,000 new citizens since 2006) and encourage their greater participation in the political system, working to end mass incarcerations which disproportionately effect people of color, immigrants, and the poor, and lead to mass deportations, focusing on labor issues such as the Domestic Worker’s Protection bills, focusing on mixed-status families, raising money and consciousness on the issue especially in the Rising American Electorate which is progressive single women, people of color, and young voters.
