New York Times
By Julia Preston
November 14, 2014
When
President Obama announces major changes to the nation’s immigration
enforcement system as early as next week, his decision will partly be a
result of a yearslong campaign of pressure
by immigrant rights groups, which have grown from a cluster of lobbying
organizations into a national force.
A
vital part of that expansion has involved money: major donations from
some of the nation’s wealthiest liberal foundations, including the Ford
Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New
York, the Open Society Foundations of the financier George Soros, and
the Atlantic Philanthropies. Over the past decade those donors have
invested more than $300 million in immigrant organizations, including
many fighting for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants
here illegally.
The
philanthropies helped the groups rebound after setbacks and financed
the infrastructure of a network in constant motion, with marches,
rallies, vigils, fasts, bus tours and voter drives.
The donors maintained their support as the immigration issue became
fiercely partisan on Capitol Hill and the activists intensified their
protests, engaging in civil disobedience and brash confrontations with
lawmakers and the police.
The
donors’ strategy arose in 2007, as immigrant groups nursed wounds from a
rout after a bill pushed by President George W. Bush failed in
Congress.
“For
all our vaunted work, we were basically a fractious coalition that just
got our butts kicked,” said Frank Sharry, a longtime advocate who is
now executive director of America’s Voice,
a core organization in the coalition.
Atlantic
and several other philanthropies funded a series of soul-searching
retreats. Days and nights of arguments produced a plan that came to be
known as the four pillars. The groups agreed
to redouble their local community organizing; to expand their work into
mobilizing voters; to create policy research to underpin their
pro-immigrant message; and to “turbocharge” their communications with
the news media, as Mr. Sharry put it, a task that fell
to him.
“The
good news was that the funders really got the idea of building up a
movement that could press for change at all levels,” Mr. Sharry said.
“We were really talking about a movement that
could win the grand prize: legislation that puts 11 million people on a
path to citizenship.”
The
philanthropies focused on a dozen regional immigrant rights
organizations that make up the backbone of the movement. They also
supported Latino service organizations like NCLR, also known
as the National Council of La Raza, and legal groups like the Mexican
American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or Maldef, and the National
Immigration Law Center.
“The
credit for our movement goes to immigrant leaders who had the courage
to step out of the shadows,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of
the Center for Community Change, another
core organization. “But the growth and speed of the movement was
significantly aided by a small number of visionary philanthropies.”
The
Ford Foundation already had a decades-long track record of funding
nonprofit organizations aiding immigrants. In 2003 Ford and Carnegie
joined with several other donors to create an unusual
collaborative fund to augment support for local groups. Since then,
Carnegie has given about $100 million for immigration initiatives, all
in conventional charitable donations, including millions to help legal
immigrants become American citizens.
The
Open Society Foundations of Mr. Soros, an immigrant born in Hungary,
have invested about $76 million in the past decade under the rubric of
immigrant rights, according to Archana Sahgal,
a program officer.
The
Atlantic Philanthropies were founded by Charles Feeney, an
Irish-American billionaire who built his fortune with a chain of
duty-free shops. Atlantic has given nearly $69 million in 72
immigration grants in the last decade. About half of those grants were
made in donations that allow lobbying.
Most
of the philanthropies’ funds have been tax-exempt charitable donations
that cannot be used primarily to influence legislation. In 2013, when
the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration
bill and the House was weighing its options, several foundations also
made multimillion-dollar “social welfare” grants that can be used for
lobbying.
“Our
grantees are generally working in the direction of our long-term goal
of protecting the rights and dignity of immigrants and our belief that
immigrants should have a voice,” said Mayra
Peters-Quintero, a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation, which
has donated about $80 million to immigrant groups over the past 10
years, all in charitable funds.
“The compass that drives our work is not the political cycle of the moment,” she said.
After
setting their course in 2008, the advocacy groups expanded rapidly,
amplifying their street actions with news conferences, Twitter feeds and
texting lists.
A
rally on the National Mall in March 2010 drew tens of thousands of
protesters from around the country. But internecine bickering weakened
the push for the Dream Act, a bill with a path to
citizenship for immigrants who came when they were children. It failed
in the Senate in late 2010.
One
organization, the National Immigration Forum, branched out beyond the
main donors and shifted its focus to recruiting conservatives, including
evangelical Christians and leaders from business
and law enforcement.
Young
immigrants who call themselves Dreamers agitated for faster change.
With little more than pocket money, students staged protests starting in
2009 that eventually prodded Mr. Obama three
years later to take his first major executive action on immigration, a
program that has given reprieves from deportation to more than 580,000
Dreamers.
“We
did it with nothing, and we won,” said Cristina Jiménez, managing
director of United We Dream, one group that led that crusade. “It was a
powerful feeling.”
In 2013, Ford gave $2.3 million to United We Dream for a national effort to help young immigrants sign up for the reprieves.
During
the debate in Congress last year, the policy advocacy wing of Open
Society gave $6.2 million to several groups in donations allowing
lobbying.
“We
have enormous faith in the groups with which we have had longstanding
relationships, and we wanted to give them resources to pursue the best
possible legislative fix for the problems in
our immigration system,” said Caroline Chambers, deputy director of the
Open Society Policy Center.
The
advocates backed the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate last year.
But the Republican majority in the House rejected it. In August, the
House approved a bill to cancel the Dreamer
reprieve program, an early warning to Mr. Obama that Republicans were
ready to challenge any new unilateral action.
Foundation
leaders said they have not had misgivings, even as Republican
resistance to their beneficiaries’ agenda has intensified. “Name me
something in the American political debate that
isn’t partisan right now,” said Stephen McConnell, director of United
States programs for the Atlantic Philanthropies. “It’s just the nature
of the beast.”
Some opponents accuse the foundations of blatant partisanship.
“The
whole apparatus has become the handmaiden of the Democratic Party,”
said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration
Reform, or FAIR, which opposes legalization for
unauthorized immigrants. “These foundations fund activist organizations
designed to create ethnic identity enclaves and politically control
them for partisan purposes.”
Mr. Stein’s group is funded by followers’ donations and by some large contributions from conservative donors.
Foundation
leaders said they were vigilant to ensure their donations did not
violate tax laws prohibiting them from funding partisan campaigns.
“We
want to protect the interests of immigrants,” said Mr. McConnell of
Atlantic. Echoing other foundation officers, he said, “Atlantic does not
in any way support candidates or get involved
in partisan politics.”
This
year, as the prospects for legislation faded, foundation funding waned
by at least 50 percent, activists said, leaving them scrounging.
Atlantic, a mainstay, is winding down its operation,
following Mr. Feeney’s instructions to give away his assets during his
lifetime. Atlantic will make its last donations in 2016.
Immigrant
and Latino groups carried on limited voter mobilization efforts for the
midterm elections. They no longer have funds for showy rallies. They
are frustrated that legislation with
a path to citizenship seems out of reach.
But
now that the White House has confirmed that Mr. Obama plans measures
that could shield as many as five million immigrants from deportation,
the advocates are mobilized and pushing him
to act as broadly as his powers allow.
Last
week, two days after the president held a news conference in the wake
of the midterm elections, vowing to take executive action on
immigration, Gustavo Torres, the executive director
of CASA de Maryland and a coalition leader, was protesting once again
in front of the White House.
“We
expect the president to be big and bold,” he said. “This is his
opportunity to make sure we are going to remember him as the president
who made a difference for Latino and immigrant communities.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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