Cultivating Opportunity

Foundation-backed coalition helps immigrants in California’s Central Valley gain rights and citizenship

At dawn, a pale sun rises over distant mountains and fights its way through

a fog as thick and fibrous as cotton. As the day’s first breezes begin to lift the blanket off a slumbering valley, groups of brown-skinned men, clad in rolled-up jeans and white shirts, prepare golden raisins for market — gathering the fruit on long reams of paper, then folding the paper into boxes that will soon be loaded on trucks.

The scene is repeated many fall mornings in fields that rest between the ubiquitous fruit and vegetable groves along the 430-mile length of California’s Central Valley, an agricultural belt that stretches from north of Sacramento south to Bakersfield.

The valley may not be America’s breadbasket, but it certainly ranks as its produce aisle. Twenty-five percent of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown here in an area the size of England, a tribute to what Ernest E. Velasquez, executive director of Catholic Charities Diocese of Fresno, calls “the holy trinity” of central California: cheap dirt, cheap water, and cheap labor.

Despite the richness of its land, the Central Valley hasn’t necessarily been all things to all of its three million people. The lifeblood of agribusiness — the “cheap labor” of the food-growing equation — comes from Mexico, Guatemala, Laos, Cambodia, Russia, and many other points on the globe.

Many of the workers live in the United States illegally. Although most must endure harsh working conditions at low pay, few are willing to complain about mistreatment because they fear discovery by authorities who would kick them out of the country.

“Probably half of our people are new immigrants,” says Mr. Velasquez. “They have problems paying for health care and the basic necessities of life.”

Supporting Advocacy

To help immigrants deal with those problems — by teaching them English, preparing them to become U.S. citizens, and showing them how to push government officials, business leaders, and others to provide better housing, schools, and work — Mr. Velasquez is part of one of the nation’s most unusual foundation-supported coalitions.

Six years ago, the James Irvine Foundation founded the Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship, and it has provided $12-million to the group so far.

The partnership has gathered immigrants and groups that organize them to discuss their problems and how to do something about them. The partnership has produced significant results, and has helped persuade other grant makers to participate in efforts in the Central Valley. But its existence has also raised questions about the role foundations should play in the debate over the nation’s immigration policies, and how much a tax-exempt organization should do to support people who live in the United States illegally.

The partnership, formed with two members, now boasts 14 grass-roots organizations that work together to dispense money that Irvine provided. In addition, the partnership makes grants to help small groups that represent minorities get off the ground, and has so far dispensed $255,000 to help immigrant groups advocate for changes that will improve their lives.

Besides welcoming large, established groups such as Catholic Charities, the Central Valley Partnership includes groups formed by Laotian, Hmong, Latino, Cambodian, and Vietnamese people. Organizations from each ethnic group are supposed to work together to break down barriers of language and culture to develop a set of priorities for the partnership.

Craig McGarvey, program director of civic culture at Irvine, and founder of the partnership, says the goal is not just to improve the lives of immigrants, but to show them how democracy works as they are taking steps to become American citizens. The coalition helped 10,000 immigrants become citizens in 1997 and 1998, the most recent years for which figures are available, Mr. McGarvey says.

The partnership helps small groups of immigrants and refugees pay for organizing drives and the gathering of data that can be used in advocacy campaigns and battles with governments, says Mr. McGarvey.

Among the successes that have been achieved by partnership members:

• The Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front, which represents 110,000 people from Oaxaca, Mexico, who have moved to California, pushed Fresno County officials in 2000 to relocate 253 Oaxacans from homes surrounding a toxic-waste dump in the town of Malaga after some residents became ill. The group also urged the companies responsible for the dump to pay the residents for their suffering. The group won the relocation battle, plus enough money to help the immigrants pay for new homes. Rufino Dominguez, general coordinator of the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front, says, “We couldn’t push for civic participation and civil-rights issues without the partnership’s help.”
• Weary of ramshackle housing, farm workers in Dixon, a town outside Sacramento, organized with the partnership’s help in 1997. By negotiating with government officials and home builders, the workers encouraged the building of low-cost homes they eventually moved into. “They became very savvy at making deals,” Mr. McGarvey says.
• Also in 1997, when Congress was considering the repeal of a federal statute governing the rights of those in the country illegally to live with family members who are U.S. citizens, the Tulare County Civic Action League became concerned that hundreds of Central Valley families would be forced to split up. The league, a partnership member, used money it raised from dances and car washes to pay for a trip to Washington, where it participated in an advocacy effort that helped persuade Congress to preserve existing law.

While such achievements have won the partnership much acclaim, some members say the coalition’s existence may have consequences that prove farther-reaching.

“The most important thing isn’t necessarily the particular type of change people are trying to win,” says Mark Silverman, a lawyer for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, in San Francisco, one of the partnership’s charter members. “It’s the skills they learn that help them participate in our society.”

By teaching those skills, the partnership hopes to attain its secondary goal: to create leaders among immigrant groups.

Some outside the partnership see promise in the Central Valley’s approach.

“These groups are basically laboratories for developing community leaders,” says Lina Avidan, program executive at the Zellerbach Family Fund, in San Francisco, a foundation that provided $800,000 in grants to immigrant groups in Northern California last year. Previously, Ms. Avidan led the National Conference on Citizenship, a Falls Church, Va., organization that runs a program similar in intent to the Central Valley Partnership’s program.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a board member of the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, says that the partnership is run very differently from most foundation programs, which minority groups find very hard to tap for grants.

With barriers of language, the relatively small size of their groups, and a lack of social or professional connections to foundations, immigrant nonprofit organizations often say they are overlooked for grants.

“Foundations set the tone and create the language through their grant making,” says Mr. Rivera-Salgado. “But what if your language isn’t theirs? Then you don’t have much of a chance.”

Those who admire the way the partnership has grown credit Mr. McGarvey with letting people in the Central Valley call the shots, instead of developing a plan outside the valley and forcing groups to stick to it to maintain their foundation support.

“There’s a realization that we have to take a step back and let them develop their own voice,” says Mr. Silverman.

‘Misguided’ Grants

But not everyone is so enthusiastic about foundations supporting programs to help people who are in the United States illegally. Some organizations, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group in Washington that lobbies for what it considers to be moderate levels of immigration, say that the partnership’s grants are misdirected.

“Our view is that any program, public or private, which treats illegal aliens as if they belong in the United States is misguided because it encourages more immigration,” says Jack Martin, special-projects director for the federation.

Mr. McGarvey says the Irvine Foundation has sought “to ensure we don’t do anything illegal by giving support.” He adds that helping illegal immigrants deal with the naturalization process, and taking steps to become citizens, falls well within both ethical and legal guidelines.

“Our foundation believes that the naturalization process is one of the best ways to integrate people into American society and to get them involved in improving their neighborhoods,” he says. “These folks,” says Mr. McGarvey, “are the future of California.”

Besides the Irvine Foundation, numerous other groups have seen philanthropic opportunities in California’s immigrant population, because of both its large numbers and those immigrants’ stakes in the future of California.

In addition to the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Rosenberg Foundation, also in San Francisco, made $5-million in grants in 2000 to programs geared toward the children of low-wage immigrant workers, some of whom are in the Central Valley.

The California Endowment, in Woodland Hills, announced a $50-million, long-term program last March to increase health-care access for farm workers in the Central Valley. During the grant’s announcement, Mexican President Vicente Fox joined a news conference in Fresno and heralded the grant as an example of binational cooperation for workers who often live and work in two countries at different times of the year.

Still, grant makers should be doing more, say many foundation officials. What’s more, because of California government cutbacks and the economy’s effects on foundations’ endowments, some programs that benefit immigrants may face budget trims, which could portend disaster for small nonprofit groups that serve immigrants. Such a set of circumstances would leave organizations in an untenable — if not exactly novel — position.

“The need increases as the population has,” says Ms. Avidan, of the Zellerbach Family Fund. “And that need has never been met.”