Metropolitan Variation in Immigrant Rights Funding: Foundations and DACA

• In Event: Local Immigrant Organizations, Community Sponsorship, and City Level Policies

Abstract

In June 2012, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has made temporary deportation protection and work authorization available to over 835,000 young undocumented immigrants in the United States. With current debates focused on safeguarding DACA and other precarious immigrant rights protections, little attention has been given to what it took to implement DACA in a country where the federal government has a laissez-faire attitude toward immigrant integration. The success of the DACA program is the result of the hard work of innumerable immigrant-serving organizations, which have relied heavily on philanthropic support for their community-based service and advocacy work. This paper discusses the roles of foundations in supporting the implementation of DACA and the challenges they have faced along the way. To do so, we draw on 28 interviews with foundations, both large and small, active in three immigrant-dense metro areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Houston Area, and the New York City Metro Area. We review the different DACA-related activities these foundations funded, the locally distinct strategies they employed to coordinate these resources, and the different models of public-private partnerships they helped to develop. We also discuss how the growing political volatility of DACA has made it more challenging for foundations to invest in organizations that serve undocumented immigrants. Our paper, which shows that philanthropic investments in immigrant rights fluctuate with changes in national and local political climates, seeks to contribute to theorizing about regional approaches to immigrant philanthropy. It also aims to highlight foundation best practices for helping vulnerable immigrant communities. (This paper is co-authored with Shannon Gleeson, Cornell University.)

Authors

• Els de Graauw, Baruch College, CUNY

• Shannon Gleeson, Cornell University