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Building Immigrant Community Power Through Legislative Advocacy.
A BRIDGE Project Workshop: Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue In the Global Economy

The BRIDGE Project of NNIRR is excited to introduce this new workshop module, “Building Immigrant Community Power Through Legislative Advocacy.” Like the BRIDGE Project workbook before it, this curriculum is intended as a tool for all organizers, community groups, educators, activists, and leaders to support the rights of immigrant and refugee communities.

As we write this module in Spring 2006, the immigrant and refugee rights movement is at a historical crossroads. Tens of thousands of immigrants, refugees, and their allies have mobilized in hundreds of cities across the U.S., marching against devastating immigration proposals. We offer this curriculum in the hopes that it will provide a tool to help build the long-term capacity of our movement to fight for all of our human rights. We hope that the discussions raised by the activities and questions in this module will help our movement to envision a mode of political engagement that moves from defending against “bad legislation” that endangers our communities, to honing our skills and deepening our understanding of what “good legislation” would actually look like.

What do we mean by legislative advocacy by and for immigrant communities, and why is it important? Immigrant communities face structural barriers to empowerment in the U.S. that other
communities may not face. As newcomers and this country, immigrants who are not U.S. citizens do not have the opportunity to vote. Yet like other disenfranchised groups in the past, we have the right and the responsibility to help shape the world in which we live. Congressional debates often seem limited to those who have “expertise” or policy degrees—but we believe that we all have the right, responsibility, and ability for our communities to affect and shape the change we want to see. This participation is true democracy, and legislative advocacy can thus be seen in the context of increasing civic engagement of immigrant communities. Building capacity for legislative advocacy goes hand in hand with increasing civic participation and long term organizing for immigrant and refugee community power.

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