Promising Practices in Immigrant Integration

1. Promising Practices in Immigrant Integration Focus: Communications and Law Enforcement A presentation prepared by the Latino Migration Project and the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill for the Building Integrated Communities Initiative in Greenville, North Carolina

2. Building Integrated Communities is a statewide initiative of the Latino Migration Project. The intent of this project is to help North Carolina city governments successfully engage with immigrants and refugee populations in order to improve public safety, promote economic development, enhance communication, and improve relationships. The expectation is that city governments and diverse community stakeholders will generate locally-relevant strategies to strengthen outcomes. For more info, visit http://migration.unc.edu/bic/The program is made possible by a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

3. Themes from focus groups • How have municipalities devised information and communication campaigns for immigrants, with a particular focus on written info? • What have municipalities done to work on police/immigrant relationships? • Leadership development (cont’d from last meeting)

4. Improving Access to Information Strategies • Increase access to city services. • Increase communication with immigrant populations. • Build trust between diverse community sectors and government agencies. • Increase participation in civic opportunities.

5. Comprehensive Language Policy • Assess constituents’ language needs by identifying commonly spoken languages by local populations, especially those that are likely to participate in their programs. • Assess capacity to communicate with and serve English language learners and identify areas for improvement (e.g., hiring more bilingual staff members, improving signage, developing multilingual telephone capacity, translating vital documents, etc.). • Develop language assistance plans to improve communications with immigrant populations. • Train staff members so that they know how to implement an agency’s language assistance policy. • Establish centralized resources or offices to provide technical assistance and monitor the implementation of language assistance plans. • Conduct outreach to publicize the availability of language assistance services.

6. Oakland, CA: Volunteer Program Oakland Office of Equal Access to Services: • Provides interpretation and translation for all city agencies in 4 languages. • Responsibilities include interpreting, answering and returning phone calls, proofreading translated city documents, and helping residents complete English-language forms.

7. Woodburn, OR: Community Relations Officer • Position created by city to translate and act as ombudsman for the Hispanic Community. • This individual interprets at local meetings and in city hall, translates official documents and informal materials, provides resource referrals, and develops public information for media.

8. Appropriate and Effective Materials • Present information in a way that is straightforward and understandable to the average reader. • Both materials and presentations should be in clear and non-technical language with helpful visuals aids. • Pre-test materials with small and diverse focus group.

9. Law Enforcement Best Practices • Santa Clara County, California Police Department: Criminal Justice Initiatives • NYPD: Community forums, Cultural Competency Training of Police Officers and Community Education • Seattle Police Dept: Outreach to local immigrant leaders Source: Vera Institute

10. Leadership development Immigrant Leadership Institute, San Jose City College, California Community Education, Santa Clara County Social Services, Santa Clara County

11. Sources • Grant Makers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees • “Municipal innovations in Immigrant integration: 20 cities, 20 good practices” http://www.nlc.org/