More Than 20 U.S. Cities Working to Integrate Immigrants into Their Communities
At least 26 cities across the United States have are working on integrating immigrants into their communities.
Officials in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City have devised their own ways to approach immigrants residing in their communities, as well as those who they want to attract to live in their neighborhoods, NBC News reported.
In addition, cities have made another 37 bodies composed of commissions, task forces, and welcoming offices to promote immigrant integration, according to the report released as part of the National Immigrant Integration Conference, or NICC, currently taking place in New York, the news outlet wrote.
"While our national politics is incredibly dysfunctional, a lot of our local governments end up being oriented around problem solving and moving forward," said Manuel Pastor, one of the authors of the study titled "Opening Minds, Opening Doors, Opening Communities: Cities Leading for Immigrant Integration," released on Tuesday. Pastor is also the head of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) at the University of Southern California, or USC, NBC News noted.
"You can talk about deporting 11 million people, but it's pretty hard to do. You can talk about banning Muslims, but it's constitutionally problematic," Pastor continued, as quoted by NBC News. "You can imagine all these schemes at a state level, but at a local level people find immigrants are their neighbors, they are their workers, they are an important part of the community - so the question is how do we bubble up this local cooperation and wisdom."
A federal national integration hasn't existed in the U.S. since the early 20th century, the news outlet wrote. According to the study's researchers, local communities have been important in immigrant integration throughout history, given that they provide unions and businesses that require immigrants' skills.
At this week's NICC event in Brooklyn, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a roomful of immigration activists that she wants undocumented immigrants to be treated like human beings, adding that she aims to abolish private immigration detention centers, WSHU wrote.
"There are people in immigration detention right now who are on a hunger strike," she said, as quoted by WSHU. "We need to be focused on detention conditions. And as president I'll close private immigration detention centers."
In November 2014, Barack Obama's administration set up the White House Task Force on New Americans and this past September established the Building Welcoming Communities Campaign, which are both aimed to better integrate immigrants in communities and instituting goals to create more welcoming committees, NBC News reported. However, these efforts don't have good results.