Hard Times for Immigrants

The bad economy and a September 11 backlash pose challenges for charities that serve people new to America

David M. Lubell’s job isn’t all that daunting — or so he says. All he has to do is battle

anti-immigrant groups in the Deep South while working in behalf of 300,000 immigrants in Tennessee, where the state growth rate of those new to the United States is the sixth highest in the country.

Mr. Lubell’s group, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, in Memphis, has led a successful effort to win immigrants without Social Security cards the right to carry driver’s licenses, has organized immigrants into groups of advocates, and has mounted public-awareness campaigns to highlight the plight of low-income immigrants. And he has done it all from a cramped office in a church, where Mr. Lubell — the group’s leader, spokesman, and lone paid employee — has to wait an hour in the morning to use the phone while a noisy 25-year-old air conditioner warms up.

His annual budget: $37,000.

Ed Leahy knows how he feels. Mr. Leahy is coordinator for the Immigrant Rights Network of Iowa-Nebraska, in Omaha, which rents a cubicle from another organization, where he and a part-time organizer link immigrants to legal and professional help, perform advocacy for immigrant workers’ rights, and build coalitions among groups of newcomers — all on $50,000 per year.

But because of swelling populations of immigrants, Mr. Lubell and Mr. Leahy don’t have time to develop their organizations. “The work is so overwhelming that I don’t have time to deal with the growth aspect,” says Mr. Leahy.

But those advocacy groups, formed in recent years as immigrants have moved to small towns that are new territory for people moving to the United States, aren’t the only ones suffering from tight budgets. Organizations that have been around for years say that a slow economy and an anti-immigrant backlash since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have endangered their programs — even as the need to advocate in favor of immigrants has become more pressing.

Leaders of national groups that work to promote the rights of immigrants and refugees say their organizations are also feeling the pinch. Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group in Washington, says that donations and grants to immigrants groups may have decreased because of the need to help victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Heightened fears about immigrants after the terrorist strikes also contributed to the short-circuiting of gains that advocates had made toward getting less restrictive immigration laws passed in the years before the attacks. “The immigrants’ rights cause has been severely affected by September 11,” says Ms. Muñoz.

State Groups Hurting

In addition to organizations that make their case to members of Congress, as the National Council of La Raza does, statewide coalitions of immigrant-advocacy groups have been affected. The Washington Alliance for Immigrant and Refugee Justice, in Seattle, closed its doors earlier this year. Similar coalitions in Texas and Northern California have also closed in the past two years because of budget problems, while ones in Massachusetts and Florida are endangered by cuts in private and government funds.

Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, in Miami, says that many groups such as hers, which was formed in 1996, have suffered because foundations have been reducing their aid, as have governments. Her group, which provides legal help to immigrants, including children jailed because they are in the United States illegally, received nearly half of its $2.3-million annual budget from foundations in 2001, but only 39 percent of the budget total in 2002, as many grant makers reported drops in assets. The Florida Bar Foundation, in Orlando, one of the organization’s most regular supporters, cut its grants by 8 percent to the group during the past two years because its endowment fell in value.

Nationwide, a handful of grant makers that have had a history of supporting immigrant programs have cut back. The James Irvine Foundation, in San Francisco, which reported a loss of nearly 25 percent of its $1.6-billion in assets this year, has slashed most of its grant making to immigrant causes. The foundation made $4.2-million in grants to immigrant organizations in 2000, but has made only $1.8-million so far this year. The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, in New York, has reduced its immigrant grant making from $1.1-million in 2000 to $950,000 this year.

Potential Cuts in Services

On the other side of the political debate, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in Washington, a group that fights what it believes to be an overwhelming number of immigrants into the United States, says its flow of foundation money has also declined because of the decreasing assets of the politically conservative foundations that support it.

But the group’s efforts to battle organizations in states such as Tennessee that advocate for driver’s licenses and other forms of identification for immigrants have been bolstered by 7,000 new members who have joined the group since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Most of the group’s members pay $25 per year to support such campaigns as one that encourages the governments of major cities, such as New York and Seattle, to cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws, says Jack Martin, the organization’s spokesman.

Other organizations have seen a decrease in giving by individuals.

Many potential donors have become increasingly wary of supporting immigrants’ rights groups, Ms. Little says, because of a swirl of controversy that has followed immigrants since the terrorist attacks. Donations to the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center dropped by 50 percent in 2001.

What’s more, a federal grant of $600,000 for 2004 will likely be cut by 40 percent because of cutbacks in the federal refugee program and other programs geared toward immigrants, Ms. Little says. The organization has frozen pay, and travel and training expenses for its 47 staff members.

“It’s painful for us,” she says. “When you have a lawyer making $35,000 per year and working 60 hours per week, you’d like to give them a raise.”

The center now will look to cut some services, Ms. Little says. “We reach out to the most vulnerable people — homeless immigrants, children in detention. How do we go about deciding who isn’t worth our services? These are people with nowhere else to turn.”

Need for Advocacy

Other organization leaders say that even while their budgets have decreased, the need for advocacy for immigrants’ causes has increased. Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, in Chicago, a statewide coalition of 129 organizations, says federal government policies — such as a crackdown on immigrants working in airports and a recent Supreme Court ruling that affects immigrant workers’ ability to organize — have given advocates plenty of causes to work on. “There’s seemingly a new hit every month,” Mr. Hoyt says.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, a group formed in 1986 to help immigrants gain citizenship, adds that advocates have to work harder because many immigrants, including the mostly Latino population her group serves, have become too scared to speak out against injustices in their lives since the post-September 11 federal crackdown on immigrants.

“People are too scared to submit complaints, particularly about workplace abuse,” says Ms. Salas. “It makes it harder to run campaigns because groups have a more difficult time finding people who are willing to tell their stories to the public.”

Mr. Hoyt adds that organizations like his traditionally have had a hard time raising money. Many are relatively new and have little experience in fund raising. Many groups also rely heavily upon government funds, which can disappear during tough budgetary times. And many immigrant neighborhoods are made up largely of poor people who have a hard time finding money to give.

Politics Unclear

With the exception of a handful of national grant makers and community foundations in states that have a history of welcoming immigrants, foundation dollars have also been hard to get, even when grant makers weren’t suffering the drop in assets they face now, Mr. Hoyt says.

Grants to groups that advocate for immigrants’ causes have traditionally made up a relatively tiny slice of all foundation giving. Observers cite a fear among grant makers that they might be perceived as generous to people who are in the United States illegally (of the 31 million foreign-born people in the United States, an estimated 8 million are here without permission), or that they will be backing the causes of newcomers at the expense of programs that benefit poor people who have spent generations in the United States.

Others say that the political dimensions of immigration are too complex for many foundations to get their arms around. Liberal and conservative camps may have serious divisions within them regarding immigration, making it difficult to formulate grant-making policies.

“This isn’t an issue that goes ‘ping!’ with any one political group,” says Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group in Washington that believes immigration laws are too restrictive. “It’s not that foundations are running from controversy. It’s that they’re trying to figure this all out. And it isn’t easy.”

But the need for philanthropic help is enormous for those who work with immigrants in new so-called gateway communities, he adds. “There is a huge gap between the demographic transformation in this country and the response to it,” says Mr. Sharry.

Immigrants in New Areas

Groups across states in the Midwest and Southeast that represent an unprecedented flow of foreign-born newcomers to small towns such as Bells, Tenn. — where the population of 6,000 doubled after Latino immigrants were recruited to work at a frozen-food plant — have gotten used to working on the cheap. Such immigrant boomtowns have become a part of landscapes that, until recently, were almost completely white. Meatpacking, agricultural, industrial, and distribution companies have enticed mostly unskilled foreigners to work in cities and towns that haven’t seen large influxes of immigrants for more than 100 years, and where governments and charities are ill-equipped to deal with large numbers of low-wage people with poor English skills. Many immigrants take jobs that most American citizens won’t touch, says Mr. Leahy.

In 22 states sweeping across the country’s middle, the population of those new to the country rose by 145 percent during the 1990s, according to a study by the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington. Advocacy organizations that represent immigrants in those states are left waiting for governments, foundations, and individual donors to catch up with the burgeoning need that has accompanied immigrants into new towns.

The Center for Community Change, in Washington, an umbrella group for liberal advocacy organizations, has seen a surge in the number of immigrant groups in those states that have come to it asking for organizing help.

“Immigrant rights is the single biggest area of growth for us,” says Deepak Bhargava, the group’s executive director.

But the new organizations haven’t found much in the way of money in the Southeast and Midwest. Sometimes foundations in those places lack the resources. “The problems for groups in new gateway communities is that community foundations there might not be that strong to begin with,” says Kirke Wilson, president of the Rosenberg Foundation, in San Francisco. The foundation will make $1.8-million in grants to immigrant organizations this year. “Sometimes, it’s hard to find enough grant makers in places like Iowa or Georgia.”

Because of the shortage of local sources of money, Mr. Bhargava and others believe that national grant makers should take more of a leadership role.

The Ford Foundation, in New York, has been a lead player, supporting groups such as the Immigrant Rights Network of Iowa-Nebraska, which gets all of its money from the New York foundation.

But Mr. Lubell, whose group receives no foundation grants, and Mr. Leahy agree that shifting immigrant populations means that charities will need money to make sure that the newcomers’ assimilation into American life is successful. That need is likely to continue, if not mushroom, says Mr. Leahy.

“I’ve seen studies that show that the United States will need three million low-wage workers in the coming years, even with a high unemployment rate,” he says. “Those workers will be immigrants.”