LBF-Greenebaum Human Rights Fellowship

Transcription

1 LBF-Greenebaum Human Rights Fellowship Draft Executive Summary & Preliminary Summary of Findings NOTE: The work of the LBF-Greenebaum Fellowship Program is ongoing. In its inaugural year, we have made the following preliminary findings relating to our community s ability to meet the needs of our non-citizen population. It is our hope that this document will be an iterative document that will fluidly incorporate the feedback and contributions of the stakeholders and adapt to changing needs. It is our further hope that these findings can facilitate extended and ongoing dialogue, coordination, and action. We plan to release the final report, incorporating the feedback of stakeholders at the end of the summer. Prepared by the Fellowship team, including Professors Enid Trucios-Haynes and Jamie Abrams; Student Fellows Katherine Hall, Ben Potash, and Janet Lewis; Alumni Fellow Duffy Trager; Intern Kevin Boswell; Public Service Volunteers Steven Harris, Sarae Price, Abby Braun. Draft Executive Summary This report was prepared on behalf of the Louisville Bar Association Foundation/Greenebaum Human Rights Fellowship at the Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville. The purpose of the Fellowship is to provide law students an opportunity to work collaboratively and strategically with local non-profits organizations, law school faculty, the local noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community and others, to identify human rights abuses impacting our community and to identify ways the legal community can better meet these needs. The focus of the Fellowship is on the complex human rights issues in our region; specifically those faced by the noncitizen and refugee populations of Kentucky, and of Louisville more specifically. This growing population in Kentucky is one of the state s 1

2 most vulnerable. Many individuals have faced persecution, violence, torture, and discrimination abroad and have come to the United States for opportunity and equal protection under the law. The Fellowship was created, in part, based on the premise that new members of our community may lack awareness of basic rights and services available to them. It is the hope that the LBF/Greenebaum Human Rights Fellowship can identify the ways in which the resources of the Brandeis School of Law could assist and help to ensure that human rights needs are addressed. This report and the work of the Human Rights Fellows were supported by an LBF-Greenebaum Human Rights grant received in March 2014, the inaugural year of the Human Rights Fellowship Program. The grant was generously funded by the Kentucky Bar Foundation with supplemental support provided by the Greenebaum Public Interest Program of the Brandeis School of Law of the University of Louisville. The first phase of the Fellowship Program focused on liaising with local and regional human-rights-related organizations to identify local and regional human rights issues and to understand the work of legal and other services providers to the international community. The purpose of this work was to understand the scope and range of the services provided and to begin to identify any potential gaps in information available to the public about human rights issues, as well as information about the resources and the services available. This report is designed to share this information with the larger community and those organizations providing services. The subsequent phases of the Fellowship Program will include events designed to promote public education and outreach regarding human rights issues especially to underserved communities including the international community and communities of color, and to work on human rights legal matters. This work is an ongoing project and, therefore, any findings of this report necessarily are preliminary. We have included initial feedback from the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community in Louisville, local and regional non-profit service providers, and the local private immigration bar. The report also includes a Resource Guide of regional non-profit service providers which will be updated and maintained by the Human Rights Fellowship Program and made publicly available. A media summary of news coverage was prepared of the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community over the past two years to understand the 2

3 perceptions of this community and the level of awareness in the news media. We use the phrase in this report noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community to identify the entire international population in the region. Specific demographic information about the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community is contained in the Introduction of this report. This report uses the terminology of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to refer to the international population of Kentucky and the region. We are aware that the term internationals is frequently used in the Louisville area to refer to the entire foreign-born community. The term foreign-born is used by the U.S. Census Bureau to include anyone who was not a U.S. citizen at birth and, therefore, includes individuals who have become U.S. citizens through the naturalization process. The INA uses the term alien to include any person not a citizen or national of the United States. 1 Frequently, the term noncitizen is used to avoid the pejorative implications of the statutory terminology. The report does not use the term immigrant because the INA defines an immigrant as a noncitizen authorized to reside permanently in the U.S. which includes only a small group within the community of noncitizens and refugees. Noncitizens, foreign born naturalized citizens, Latinos, and Asians account for growing shares of Kentucky s economy and population. The foreignborn make up 3.3% of the state s population with a total number of 143,689 residents. 2 Just over one-third of foreign born individuals are naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. 3 Kentucky s foreign-born population has grown from 0.9% in 1990, to 2.0% in 2000, to 3.3% in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 4 The numbers of undocumented persons within any state is a notoriously difficult number to ascertain. Many people do not fill out census data and otherwise remain outside of the typical systems from which this information is derived. The estimate for the number of unauthorized in Kentucky in 2009 was 50,000 and as high as 80,000 in 2010 as reported by the Migration Policy Institute and Pew 1 INA 101(a)(3), 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(3). 2 U.S. Census Bureau, American Fact Finder, American Community Survey 5 Year Estimates, Percentage of Foreign Born in Kentucky. 3 Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council, New Americans in Kentucky: The Political and Economic Power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in the Bluegrass State (April 2013). 4 Immigration Policy Center, New Americans in Kentucky: The Political and Economic Power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in the Bluegrass State, 1 (April 2013). 3

4 Hispanic Research Center. 5 According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center in December 2014, there was a drop of 15% in the number of undocumented people living in Kentucky with an estimated 35,000 live in Kentucky. The preliminary findings of our research include several broad observations about the obstacles that the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community may face in accessing services. There are numerous opportunities for the LBF/Greenebaum Human Rights Fellowship to assist in addressing the human rights needs of our community. Draft Preliminary Findings - Introduction This summary of findings reflects the takeaways we have identified in our inaugural year of the LBF-Greenebaum Human Rights grant. We seek to work collaboratively and strategically with local non-profits, the law school, and noncitizen, immigrant and refugee communities to identify human rights needs impacting our community and identify ways the community can better meet these needs. In our inaugural year, we prioritized liaising with local and regional organizations to identify the services currently being provided and assessing the needs and opportunities that exist within our existing service structure. We did this by conducting a comprehensive survey of all nonprofits that we identified to assess the services they provide, the challenges they face, the clients they serve, and their identified issues for resolution. We are preparing a comprehensive report summarizing the outcomes of each of those interviews. This report is intended to help the service provider community and noncitizen, immigrant and refugee population by providing one comprehensive source summarizing the services that are out there. We also conducted a media survey of all news coverage of the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee population over the past two years. Our goal was to understand the perceptions of the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community and the level of awareness in the news media about our diverse community. 5 Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council, New Americans in Kentucky: The Political and Economic Power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians in the Bluegrass State (April 2013) at 4

5 We sought to compile all of the know your rights or publicly-available resource guides and manuals that exist within the service provider community. We were curious to understand what services, materials, and resources already exist (and in what languages) and how up-to-date are they. We also interviewed members of the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community to assess their identified needs and priorities. We hope to do even more of this going forward. Through our efforts over the past year, we have identified the following preliminary findings. We present these today for consideration, conversation, and reflection among the service-provider community. Our goals in disseminating this preliminary summary of findings is to seek further input from the stakeholders and work toward a final published report later in Fall 2015 to be circulated among the provider community. IDENTIFIED CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN SERVING THE NONCITIZEN, IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE COMMUNITY PRELIMINARY FINDING 1: Service providers face challenges conducting outreach to the non-citizen population given human and economic resource limitations. Challenge: Nearly all organizations surveyed consistently identified outreach challenges. Advertising the services that organizations provide within the community is simply not feasible with the limited time and resources available to providers. While some organizations do engage in direct outreach in the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee communities, most organizations are inconsistent in this outreach and not able to sustain outreach efforts regularly. A majority of the organizations indicated that they are unable to designate any or any significant resources to advertising and/or outreach. Rather, organizations relied upon word-of-mouth, sporadic Internet announcement, and social media to get the word out to the community about the services provided. Organizations consistently cited funding constraints as the source of the challenge. Many word-of-mouth referrals were from former clients. We found these outreach challenges to be particularly noteworthy for further discussion in the provider community. Given the ever-changing noncitizen population, in both its origins and its geographic location in the Kentucky region, this could leave considerable populations under- 5

6 represented. Referrals keep the client flow steady, but open the question for further study of whether there are inaccessible groups in the community who have no knowledge of the services available to them because they lack a referral source. For instance, if former clients are talking to those in their neighborhoods about the services they received from an organization, and if those in their neighborhoods share the same country or region of origin, there could be considerable pockets of unmet need. This may be especially true for non-english speakers who are part of smaller, but still significant, noncitizen populations. The informal survey we conducted bears this out further. Respondents were predominantly from Mexico and Cuba, although we know our noncitizen, immigrant and refugee population has a much larger geographic reach. Opportunity: This is an opportunity for the Fellowship to play an important role in providing the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations of Kentucky with information about the services available to them. In addition to this report, we have created a condensed resource guide, which includes basic information about services provided by organizations and contact information. Through the production of this report and, more importantly, the resource guide, service provider information will be shared with community organizations, such as churches, schools and government offices. This resource guide may act as a resource to help service providers to assess coverage and to help clients connect with service-providers. One critical piece that the Fellowship seeks to develop further is a community-based needs assessment to identify specifically which local Metro Louisville neighborhoods and other areas in Kentucky may be underserved and in need of increased outreach efforts. In addition, the Fellowship could conduct further research on national best practices and locally through direct communication with the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations to determine the most effective advertising strategies. This could assist service providers in ensuring that their limited budgets are allocated most efficiently. The informal survey that the Fellowship conducted told a story about needs unmet. For example, while our sample was not statistically significant, our respondents overwhelmingly stated that their demand for medical services predominates over other services. In our survey, the demand for medical services among the immigrant community in Louisville outstripped the demand for legal, housing, and employment services combined. Our respondents said that medical services were out 6

7 of reach: either the services were too costly, too far away, or the community simply did not know they were available. In the future, the Fellowship seeks to explore the needs of the community further. PRELIMINARY FINDING 2: There is a strong interest in and a need for more collaboration and communication among service providers. Challenge: Multiple respondents expressed support for more collaboration and communication among providers. One respondent specifically expressed the need for a working group or platform for communication among service providers. Opportunity: Coordinating efforts to communicate and collaborate as a community of providers may be a role that the Fellowship could occupy. This report is intended to be the first step in giving service providers a more complete view of the organizational community in which they work. We hope to continue to build upon this report and the associated resource guide. The needs of the noncitizen population are ever-changing in our community. Collaboration and ongoing needs-assessment will be beneficial to all. Collaboration is precisely the type of work that the Fellowship was created to accomplish and provides an opportunity to better serve the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations of Kentucky. The Fellowship could host regular, on-going liaison meetings or a working group forum among organizations and others interested in the human rights issues in our community. The work of the Fellowship could also be directed toward providing support on specific topics of interest through research and assistance in direct legal services. Further, any research projects could serve the dual purposes of providing information to the service providers and educating the community at large. PRELIMINARY FINDING 3: Language access is a critical priority and was particularly impacted by budget cuts and resource constraints. Challenge: Most respondents identified a need for interpretation services to communicate with at least some of their clients. Many organizations have at least some staff members who speak languages other than English, most often Spanish. However, the ways in which organizations communicate with clients and patients who speak languages other than English or Spanish varies widely from using professional interpreters to having clients bring family members to provide informal interpretation services. 7

8 Respondents cited concerns over the lack of interpretation services available to noncitizen, immigrant and refugee clients seeking services from government agencies or other organizations. They indicated that this lack of access to language services is also present at domestic violence intake centers, complaint windows at the courthouse, and other areas. There appears to be no consistent way in which interpretation services are provided by organizations and there are very limited resources and little to no advertising for interpretation services available for those seeking services from someone outside the organization, such as those who seek services from a government office or a medical specialist. For service providers who do have more formalized systems for handling communication with non-english speakers, they most often utilize Language Line, or other telephonic interpretation services. This lack of consistent access to interpretation services is concerns many organizations and can hinder the provision of services to non-english speaking service providers. Opportunity: This is an ideal opportunity for service providers to use the working group platform to communicate and work more closely with one another. Providers could share the interpretation services that they do provide and/or to which they have access with other organizations. Communication could both make service providers more aware of the gaps in language services and could help to share the burden of providing language services, especially for non-english or Spanish speakers. Additionally, the Fellowship may be able to assist in improving availability of these services and providing a link between service providers and the University of Louisville. For example, fellows might research and develop best practices for interpretation services and share them via the working group. Fellows may be able to link service providers with other departments in the University of Louisville community to provide student interpreters who are proficient in languages, especially those other than Spanish. This could be a relatively low cost but favorable solution to the gap in interpretation services, as compared to other services, such as Language Line. This is an initiative that can be started on a trial basis in the near future and expanded upon by fellows as needed and depending upon the success of the program and interest from both the University of Louisville community and service providers. Finally, there may be a need for further assessment and reporting about Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which the Fellowship could conduct. Under 8

9 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, recipients of federal financial assistance are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin, including limited English proficiency. 6 The language access obligations require federal agencies to take steps to ensure that federallyfunded and federally-conducted activities are accessible to all persons who, as a result of national origin, are not proficient or are limited in their ability to communicate in the English language. Anyone who is Limited English Proficient (LEP) 7 under Title VI may be eligible for mandatory language assistance with respect to a particular service, benefit, or encounter. PRELIMINARY FINDING 4: Developing and sustaining a comprehensive understanding of the needs of our non-citizen population. Challenge: Respondents described how valuable publishing resources and reports to the public relating to immigration issues in Kentucky are. Some organizations produce materials, such as newsletters, or annual reports on a periodic basis. However, only a very small minority of the organizations that were interviewed produces any type of comprehensive reports that consider immigration and/or human rights issues in the city or state as a whole. Instead, service providers, both advocacy organizations and those that provide direct services, are much more internally focused and, again, face funding constraints that do not allow for the generation of these types of publications without reallocating funds away from client services. However, several organizations cited lack of information or misinformation about a variety of issues as human rights concerns. Opportunity: This is an opportunity for the Fellowship to address the concerns of service providers. The Fellowship seeks to provide public education about the legal system and human rights issues. This report is the first step in fulfilling that goal that can be built up in the future. In the future, narrower topics can be identified as concerns by service providers and researched by fellows. For example, such topics may include issues faced by undocumented noncitizens who are in need of civil litigation services, access to healthcare and insurance for noncitizen, immigrant and refugee under current federal legislation, or prejudice and discrimination faced by noncitizen, immigrant and refugee and ways in 6 See 42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq. 7 LEP includes those who do not speak English as their primary language and who have a limited ability to read, write, speak, or understand English. 9

10 which these incidents can be addressed. These projects can include broader information about topics and experiences of local noncitizens, immigrants and/ or refugees, as well as the concerns or solutions provided by service providers in Kentucky. Student fellows could even work alongside a relevant organization to help address the needs discussed and/or identified in the research. This would achieve two purposes of the Fellowship by allowing the fellow to gain legal and/or policy experience while also providing assistance to the organization and furthering the mission of the Fellowship to research and help to address human rights issues in the community and state. These research projects and reports could also provide topics for future community outreach events to help eliminate concerns regarding lack of information and misinformation. These research projects could serve the dual purposes of providing information to the service providers and educating the community at large. PRELIMINARY FINDING 5: Recognizing that our non-citizen population identifies needs more holistically than we are able to provide them. Challenges: One critical priority of the Fellowship has been to identify opportunities and challenges facing the non-citizen population. We interviewed community members informally and hope to conduct more formal interviews to better understand the needs of the population as they relate to the service currently being provided. From our early interviews, we identified some tentative conclusions that we would like to further explore with stakeholders and with the community. The survey response is limited because participation was sought among those attending the third annual Day of Dignity event at the Ali Center which is geared primarily to the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community. Interestingly, those surveyed at this event listed learning services, translation/language services, employment services, and medical services all above legal services in the services that made the experience in the Louisville community better. There are several gaps in services that have been identified during the creation of this report. However, conclusions regarding gaps in services are only preliminary and speculative. The Fellowship hopes to conduct direct outreach to these populations to gain a more accurate and complete view of the types of services that they find most important and those areas in which they wish to see more services. 1. Educational Support 10

11 Educational support for both current K-12 students and adults seeking educational assistance is an area for growth. While students enrolled in Jefferson County Public Schools receive mandated assistance, this is not always enough for students. Outside of state mandated services, few organizations allocate resources or have a mission of providing additional support to these children. There are even fewer resources provided to adults who are in need of educational support. Of the organizations that do focus upon these services, many have a limited scope in terms of the populations that they serve. Others that provide English language learning support, such as the Louisville Free Public Library, do so on an informal basis. These organizations provide important services, but gaps still exist. The 38 percent of noncitizen, immigrant and refugees who do not speak English well could benefit from more resources devoted to English learning services. Additionally, 31.2 percent of the noncitizen population in Kentucky does not have a high school diploma. 8 Many of these individuals would likely benefit from educational support, but are limited in options and availability. 2. Medical Services Medical services for noncitizen, immigrant and refugee and refugee populations are provided almost entirely on a volunteer basis at several clinics. This often leads to long wait times and limited services available at the clinics themselves. Additionally, these clinics have seen a dynamic shift in their client base in recent months because of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act and the implementation of Kynect. This has led to an increased share of total patients being undocumented and, as such, has often led to increased need for language services. Interviews indicated that the medical service providers were often those most likely to have informal language services and were sometimes left to rely upon the services of a family member or friend of the patient. The lack of formal procedures may be partially attributed to the fact that the volunteer system upon which these clinics are founded often leads to inconsistency in staffing from day to day. These organizations could benefit from both the best practices guide for language services and the development of a working group for increased communication among service providers regarding issues such as the provision of language 8 Immigration Policy Center, New Americans in Kentucky, 3. 11

12 services. However, the lack of medical services overall is something that needs further attention and research before conclusions can be made. 3. Legal Assistance This report indicates that there is a deficit in the legal services available to low-income noncitizens. While documented noncitizens, immigrants and refugees do have access the organizations, such as the Legal Aid Society, undocumented individuals do not have access to Legal Aid services. Beyond Legal Aid services, the other legal service providers exclusively provide immigration legal services. This leaves an obvious gap in services for Kentucky noncitizens, immigrants and refugees. This gap is in the provision of legal services for various civil matters, such as representation in housing and foreclosure, domestic violence and family law. This is especially concerning because undocumented individuals are an especially vulnerable and often underserved population. Several service providers also indicated lack of access to legal services as a human rights issue of concern. While funding is often a hindrance and recognition must be given to difficult decisions made by service providers when allocating resources, these concerns for access to legal services, if mirrored by the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee community, must be addressed. Opportunity: In the future, the Fellowship could act in a more direct service provider function and provide pro bono legal services to undocumented persons in need of these services in conjunction with other service providers. Fellows would gain practical experience regarding a wide range of legal issues, while also assisting in addressing a crucial gap in services available to an underserved population. Conclusion These findings are meant to act as a guide and a basis for the Fellowship s involvement in the service provider community in Kentucky. This report was created so that the Fellowship could determine areas in which it could effectively support and act as a liaison for this community without duplicating services. Second, this report is meant to provide service providers with a broader view of the community in which they work. This view and the associated observations will hopefully act as a catalyst for a conversation about how to best serve Kentucky s noncitizens, immigrants and refugees. While this is only a preliminary look at the services available to this population, it is meant to be an ongoing project that will provide a view of the changing needs of the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations and the ways in which these needs are being addressed. The 12

13 end goal of this report and the Fellowship itself is to act as a resource for the service provider community. Finally, this report can also provide important information to the community at large. This report and the associated resource guide can be distributed throughout the community, to churches and other community organizations, as well as government offices. It is important that the community, especially those in government, to be aware of the work that is already being done to serve and support the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations, but also the challenges faced by these organizations in providing services and the opportunities that exist for expansion and improvement of services. In the future, the Fellowship may be able to act as a liaison between these organizations or government offices and other service providers or the noncitizen, immigrant and refugee populations themselves for the implementation of new and expanded services. 13