The Black Immigrant Engagement Initiative (BIEI) has several key goals, including:
- Increasing the visibility of Black immigrants in local, state, and federal advocacy campaigns, and achieve greater inclusion of their priorities in the broader immigrant rights movement;
- Expanding community access to accurate, reliable, free, translated information about immigration remedies, preventing community members from becoming targets of fraud, etc.;
- Ensuring that the national discourse on immigration includes the stories of Black immigrants;
- Strengthening African and Caribbean immigrant-led and -serving networks in New York with the capacity to provide immigration legal services and to advocate on behalf of these communities; and
- Improving access to legal services for African and Caribbean immigrants.
- Throughout the initiative, BIEI groups have undoubtedly gained the capacity and skills to engage in and lead advocacy campaigns around the issues impacting the Black immigrant community, such as “crim-imm” - the intersection of criminal justice and immigration enforcement - as well as language access, Temporary Protected Status, and more.
For more information, please contact Kemah George, Community Engagement Manager at [email protected].