What is the intersection between immigrants and people with disabilities? Why should the disability community care about immigration reform? How can disability community organizers talk about immigration with their members?
Speakers:
David Hutt, National Disability Rights Network, Washington DC
Jennifer Alewelt, Arizona Center for Disability Law,
Michelle Garcia, Access Living, Chicago IL
Joe Caldwell, National Council on Aging, Washington DC
(see bios below)
TUESDAY, June 18th, 1-2 pm Eastern time, 12-1 Central time, 11-12 Mountain time, 10-11 am Pacific time
Call in number: 1-213-342-3000
Code: 193134#
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Speaker Bios:
- David Hutt is a Senior Staff Attorney with the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) working on abuse and neglect and access issues for the federally funded Protection and Advocacy System. David also co-chairs the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities International Task Force. Prior to joining NDRN he was an attorney for the New York Protection and Advocacy system assisting individuals with disabilities.
- Jennifer Alewelt is a staff attorney and coordinator of the Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Mental Illness grant at the Arizona Center for Disability Law. She is lead counsel in the Center’s case against the Arizona Department of Corrections for its failure to provide adequate mental health care and Constitutional conditions of confinement. Along with the Florence Immigration Refugee Rights Project, Jennifer has assisted immigrants transitioning into the community as legal residents.
- Joe Caldwell, Ph.D., is Director of Long-Term Services and Supports Policy at the National Council on Aging. He leads the Friday Morning Collaborative, a coalition of 36 national aging and disability organizations working together to advance long-term services and supports policy. Prior to joining NCOA, he was a Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Fellow with Senator Christopher J. Dodd on the Senate HELP Committee. He is a former co-chair of the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities LTSS Task Force. Joe is also an Adjunct Assistant Research Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned his doctorate in Disability Studies.
- Michelle Garcia works for Access Living as the Latino Community Organizer. She coordinates a Latino advocacy group called Cambiando Vidas, whose mission is to create social change within the Latino community. She is responsible for increasing the number of Latino leaders with disabilities and raising awareness of disability issues such as immigration, transportation, civil rights, and self-esteem, through organizing forums to educate Latinos with disabilities about rights and services.
Date: 5-21-13
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Real time Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
Speaker: Glad to have you here.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Who else do we have on so far?
Joe: Hi, Jessica, this is Joe Caldwell.
Jessica: Hi, Joe. I hope you got my e mail last night. Sorry about sending it so late. Do you have a preference when you speak?
Joe: No, I’m open. I’m okay with second if that’s the way it goes.
Jessica: Do we have Michelle or David yet?
Diane: This is Diane.
Jessica: Diane, are you on the chat today?
Diane: Yes.
Jessica: Great. Thank you. I feel a little Rusty since we haven’t had one of these lately. I’m trying to get everything organized here. Who else is with us so far?
David: David Hutt.
Jessica: Did you have a preference about the order you’re speaking.
David: No.
Jessica: Arizona center for disability loss is going to join us, so would you like him to speak before you or after?
David: I can do the lead in and national and then we can lead into Arizona.
Jessica: Give people a few moments to join.
Michelle: Michelle Garcia.
Jessica: Hi, Michelle. This is Jessica. Thank you for being here. Michelle, are you good with speaking first or would you rather go later?
Michelle: Either one. Doesn’t matter. If I can be the second one it will be a little bit better. Gentleman that just spoke?
Joe: This is Joe from the National Council on Aging.
Michelle: Hi, how are you?
Jessica: We are giving people a couple minutes to join. On the chat is there a way to see who is on and how many people, Diane?
Diane: Not that I can see.
Jessica: I clicked on picture of people on the right side. Looks like three people. You and me signed into user name. We may just be a small group today, but maybe we should go ahead and get started. Hopefully other people will join us as we go. You know what, I should probably go ahead and
Bill: Bill here.
Jessica: Hey, Bill. I will go ahead and mute everybody. For speakers when it is time to speak, hit *6 to un mute yourself and anybody else when we go to the dialogue, *6 to un mute yourself. Hold on one second here. Welcome everyone to the organizer’s forum and glad to have you here today and we have had a few months off the organizer’s forum trying to figure out how to restructure partly from capacity a handful of us trying to put these together and wanting to make sure that we have other ways for people to engage if they can’t be on the calls. So hopefully a little bit more about the organizer’s forum and changes that we are making. So for folks that don’t know the organizer’s forum it is a monthly call with some other pieces that we are asking, and the purpose is to expand and support community organizing and disability rights movement, so really bringing people together to learn from each other about specific skills in organizing people with disabilities and to really look at how are we expanding and building a really broad disability movement. How are we working with other parts of the social justice movement and really being inclusive of all the people that make up the disability community. And the organizer’s forum National Disability Leadership Alliance. Diane Coleman and I are the co chairs of the organizer’s forum, and Diane, un mute yourself and explain what NDLA is.
Diane: Sure. I think I un muted myself. The National Disability Leadership Alliance is an organization on national level with Steering Committee that’s composed of disability rights organizations that are run by people with disabilities ourselves as distinguished from families, service providers and other allies. So it is unique in that respect and for each the committees that within the alliance we ask that the members of the Steering Committee in this case made from Not Dead Yet co chairs with Jessica who really I want to say has carried a lot for this group and a wonderful job with working with speakers and managing really everything that goes on with this group, and I really appreciate what you have done and hopefully now in the restructuring we can move forward with even greater success.
Jessica: Thanks, Diane. That was nice. Why don’t I jump a little bit to how we restructured. What we used to do was a different topic every month and now it is a different topic every other month, and basic structure will stay the same where the organizer forum calls today will have 1 hour and have a series of speakers to talk about their experiences with the issue or the tactics that we are talking about, and then we will have open dialogue, and then the next month instead of having a new topic and new set of speakers, we will have open call to have some follow up time to talk more about the topic that we discussed, previous month and not that’s new, so figure out how that goes and change that as we like, but we invite people to join us every month. It is always the same time. Third Tuesday of the month at 10:00 a.m. pacific, 1:00 p.m. eastern and those in the Middleton always get confused by time zone and have to let you figure that out. So we do have the call captioned thanks to funding from NDLA. If you need to use the if you want to use the captioning, there’s a chat room, and you can just log on, the information is in the e mail that should have received, log in and type in questions or comments and Diane will be there and read them out to you. An important reminder for the call that I always forget is to speak slowly and clearly, and say your name before you speak. We are kind of experimenting with different conference call configurations, so what I have done now is mute everyone, and if you want to un mute yourself to speak, hit *6 and then to go back on mute, hit *6 again. So other changes that we made beyond having the calls be every other month and open calls in between, we finally have organizer’s forum website. Huge thank to Kristen from Center for Disability Rights in Rochester and link is in the e mail and check that out and you can also keep posted keep yourself posted by checking that periodically. And the other great thing Center for Disability Rights is doing is recording these calls. So hopefully we have Kristen on the call. Kristen, if you have a chance to un mute yourself and let us know 50 you’re there. She will be listening in and then we will be able to have the recording of the call on the website along with the transcript. So for all the people that aren’t here but want to hear about the call, they will have a chance to do that. And we are working to expand the social media presence so that we can continue the discussion and in that way as well, so already have a FaceBook page and if you haven’t liked us on FaceBook, organizer’s forum, please do that and we also have a Yahoo listserv that some of you are already on and we are looking for folks to help out with some of these things and if you are interested in helping at all with the organizer’s forum, send me an e mail and let me know that you’re interested and talk more about it. We are not talking about a big time commitment. What we need are people that can help post comments or questions on the listserv or on FaceBook after the call to kind of spark some dialogue with other people and we need people to help update the website and list so kind of basic maintenance that we would love some assistance with. A lot of housekeeping stuff today, but I will stop talking very soon. The other thing is we no longer do introductions on some of the calls because some were unwielding and there was a link in the e mail that you should have received that asked you to just fill out a quick form with your name, organization, e mail so that we have an idea who’s on. If you haven’t done that, please go ahead and do that during or after the call. And if you haven’t already joined one of the listservs, we hope do you that. We have the Yahoo listserv that’s for discussion and Google ListServ that’s only for notifications. And I know I’m behind in adding some people to the Google ListServ, so if I haven’t yet, I apologize, but let me know if you would like to be added to the Google listserv. Yahoo you can to it yourself on the website. I feel like I said a lot really quickly just now. Does anyone have any questions? If you do, un mute yourself with *6.
Kristen: Jessica, this is Kristen. I’m here at CDR. I’m recording the call for you.
Jessica: Thank you, Kristen.
Kristen: You’re welcome.
Jessica: We will go ahead and jump into today’s topic. I’m excited about today’s topic, immigration and disability and there’s a lot of talk about immigration all over the country and I think some of the questions for us to consider today are, you know, why should we in the disability community care about immigration? What are some of the intersections between immigrants, people with disabilities, how can we as disability community organizers talk about immigration with our members or participants of the programs and why should we? Why is that important? So those are some of the questions to guide our topic today. I will go ahead and introduce the speakers. We will started with Joe Caldwell, director of long term services and supports policy at the National Council on Aging. He leads the Friday morning collaborative, which is a coalition of aging and disability organizations that are working together to advance long term services and supports. He was a Joseph P Kennedy junior fellow with Senator Christopher Dodd on health committee and co chair citizens for disabilities long term services and supports task force. Joe is also an adjunction assistant research Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned doctorate of disability studies. Take it away, Joe.
Joe: First picking this topic, it is really important topic and timely topic to organize around and five months ago I knew absolutely nothing about immigration policy or immigration reform and really not on the agenda of a lot of people except immigrant right group and made a strong commitment at NCOA to get involved and the more that you get involved, the more disability issues that you really do see in immigration reform. I think you know, one of the challenges you face in organizing is you have to really figure a way to communicate these issues and really kind of make it really because I think a lot of the aging and disability groups have never taken a stand on immigration reform before and don’t really understand a lot of the issues and I think what Jessica said like you get puzzle books like what does immigration reform have to do with people with disabilities, but, you know, the reason I will just outline some of the reasons that we got involved in. I think the first thing that really got us involved was the direct care workforce and when you look at, you know, the data about 20 to 25% of the direct care workforce is foreign born and we also know that there’s a big shortage in terms of the projected direct care workforce with the aging of the baby boom generation. And, you know, immigration policy and really sensible immigration policy is a way to start to address that. It is not going to, you know, solve the issue, but it really can be a win win for people with disabilities and for, you know, immigrants that are direct care workers that are unauthorized right now and so, you know, there’s good news in terms of add in immigration reform. There’s, first of all, talking about all 11 million people having a pathway to citizenship so that would include a lot of the undocumented direct care workers that are working now. In addition to that create new Visa program that would allow additional unskilled workers or low skill workers to come into the country and hopefully fill shortage areas such as direct care workforce. A lot of the issues that we have focused on have really been around unauthorized seniors, people that are aging, people with disabilities and I think this is something to really communicate to the disability community. I mean it makes common sense that there are a lot of, you know, unauthorized people with disabilities but yet it is a population really is in the shadows and a lot of times not really thought about even within the disability community. And there’s not good data. That’s part of the problem, we don’t know exactly how many unauthorized people with disabilities there are, but when you think about the kinds of jobs that a lot of unauthorized immigrants are doing like construction or agriculture work or, you know, even direct care work, they really are at risk for a lot of workplace injuries or disabilities and there is probably a pretty significant disability population and authorized autistic and blind immigrants and I think that’s part of life and that’s something you have to communicate to the disability community, and one of the key issues that we have been focused on is there’s a pathway to citizenship and definitely not an easy pathway. Make sure it doesn’t discriminate people against disabilities. There’s a lot of things such as fines and back taxes and work requirements, then other barriers that really could discriminate against people with disabilities. And in addition to that, there’s tons and tons of issues related to access to health care and access to economic support. We particularly have been focusing in on Medicaid because that’s so important for people with disabilities and so important to long term services and supports and, you know, you may not know this gets really complicated, but in the current bill people on the pathway of citizenship people will have to wait 15 years and more before they can access to Medicaid, so, of course, that is a huge issue for people with disabilities or what happens to people on that pathway when they become disabled and they need long term services and they can’t access Medicaid, it is, you know, something that we are trying to really advocate around to make improvements in the bill. And I think, you know, with that I will just and by saying that, you know, it really this really is a social justice issue and I think if anybody can understand some of the struggles of immigrants, I think it really is the disability community, so you can kind of tap into that, that people want to be part of their community. They want they want a job. They want to live with independence, dignity and not have to live in the shadows. So I think the things they are fighting for are within the rights of the immigrants groups and a great opportunity to join forces. I think with that I will turn it back over to Jessica.
Jessica: Thank you. I have a lot of questions about what you brought up. Next we will hear from Michelle Garcia she works in Chicago as Latino community organizer and in a group called Cambiada Visa to create social change within the Latino community. She is responsible for increasing the number of Latino leaders with disabilities and raising awareness of disability issues including immigration as well as transportation, civil rights and self esteem through organizing forums to educate Latinos with disabilities about rights and services. Michelle, if you wanted to un mute your phone with *6 and please go ahead.
Jessica: Can you hear me?
Michelle: We can.
Jessica: We can.
Michelle: Thank you to the organizer’s forum to allow me to participate in this and talk about this very, very important topic for the disability community I believe and to myself so with the questions that we picked up for us, I think we can it is a start to this and when we talk about how does disability what is disability have to do with immigration? I think they are very much related because immigrants have been injured on the job some way or another and born with a disability and because of status language barrier don’t have access or unaware of the services available to them. So then we as as the disability community and advocates, we have to be very mindful of how to come forth and just educate the community about what’s out the there for them. Organizer for a group who 50% of them are undocumented immigrants. And so this is why I’m so passionate about the issue because I work with people everyday that are trying to like Joe said, they want to work and they can’t. They want to access services, medical services, and some of them have been denied and also to go along with this, immigrants and people with disabilities, people are many, many times fearful of asking for a service that they might need and unfortunately there has been cases where undocumented immigrants who have seek assistance such as medical. They have been sent back to their countries of origin. This is very unfortunate. We have seen it happen more and more often. I don’t know if it is becoming a trend or what it is but it is a very bad trend. Medical repatriation is the term that is being used for this horrible thing that’s been happening among undocumented community with disabilities because families and or people with disabilities are not being taken into account in this issue. Not even being asked do you want to go back to the country, do you have a place to stay here in the United States where somebody could care for you? They just hospital or health care facility just decides to get in contact with the person’s country of origin and consolate or ambassador or whatnot and a trade per se, sounds horrible and that’s the reality and send base aircraft so that they can pick up the percent from the hospital medical facility and take them back to the country of origin without say from nobody. This is horrible. I think anybody at least from what I have seen here in Chicago with like I said the group that I work with, I mean it is a very, very we could not have seen this happen. Happy for the immigration reform. How we going to be included in all of this? I think this is where like it says here in one of the questions, how could the disability care or why should we care? Because of what I just told you, for example, on the medical patriation. Horrible for a person to be sent to their country when they know that there’s no access to service. We are even worse they are even worse off in the their countries because there’s no access whatsoever or well being as a person with a disability either who have a disability or who have acquired a disability through maybe work injury or whatever. Then I will finalize my point. There’s an action alert today that I’m quite happy and ecstatic about but we still have a lot of work to do because it says immigration reform inspector going to have access to medical services but for the communities that are only intellectually and developmentally disabled and which is great because before we didn’t have anything, so now we are on the radar and it is perfect. But I believe that with this being a work permit and a lot of people that are being you know, we hope not but if somebody gets injured on the job and becomes physically disabled, they will not have the access as you know, from what we have been reading today from the amendment they did proposing. So it is a 2 way thing for me that I believe. I’m ecstatic because they have this amendment that includes some part of the disability community but also excludes people who have physical disabilities. So we still have to continue fighting and this is how I come into my last part of why should we disability commune or how can we the disability organizers talk about it with the members? I talk about it everyday pretty much. But I believe that educating the community our community, disability community, of the issue. And it is important, brings a lot of awareness and aha moments to everyone because they are now realizing how it is it impacts greatly within the community to have immigration reform or immigration issue that might come ahead. Another thing and this is and this is my final point that educating also the non disability community and making them aware of how what we are doing as advocates of disability community to be included in this immigration reform is very important. I think because of the immigration advocates that are out there, very great causes and, of course, we support and like Joe said that they are disability community and the immigrant advocates have a lot a lot of things in common. We have been oppressed, discriminated and performance of this issue. Thank you very much.
Jessica: Thank you, Michelle. That was a powerful statement why this is important. Our next speaker is David Hutt who is a staff attorney with NDRN and works on abuse and negative and access issues for the federally funded protection and advocacy system. David also co chairs the consortium with Citizens with Disabilities International Task Force and before joining NDRN he worked for the New York protection and advocacy system assisting individuals with disabilities. Go ahead, David. We are not hearing you yet. Want to try *6 again?
David: Hello?
Jessica: We can hear you. Go ahead.
David: I want to echo what Michelle and Joe have said in terms of the time of the issue and appreciate Jessica putting this together and organizers for having the topic today. Obviously a lot of the issues that are coming out is because of the bill for immigration reform going through and also other developments that have actually happened in the court systems that is interested, and I will try to touch upon it in a few minutes. Focus that at least NDRN is sort of following and I know Joe is very active in Washington and talk about some of the immigration and discriminations and issues with disabilities. Joe spoke about the benefits issues and that the legislation that’s currently being considered by Congress would restrict ability who may be in the country now undocumented and seeking citizenship and restrict the legislation as being proposed their ability to get Medicaid and Medicare for 15 years, so obviously folks in the disability community are concerned about restrictions or discriminatory effect that it would have on individuals with disabilities that are trying to seek citizenship through new path that’s being considered. That is sort of new issue coming up and other issues that have been around for several years, if not decades in terms of immigration and issues with disabilities. There’s a provision in the immigration act that is related to the public charge provision and that allows consolate officer in another country or even an individual who’s in the United States who’s in the United States citizen seeking to change immigration status. They can be either prevented from entering the United States or being basically being not allowed to change the status and being asked to leave if there’s some thought to be a public charge and one of the things and individual’s health, their age, their resource financial resource one or more of these things and individual with the disability and some officers believes they may eventually have to use public benefits they can be denied entry or asked to leave the United States, and something that has been around for awhile and discriminatory with people with disabilities. Another issue that’s been coming up in terms of caretakers for folks. Let’s say there’s a famous speaker with disability and has an aid and wants to come from El Salvador to the United States to speak at conference and simple step coming from the country to go to leave and if that individual has aide and consolate officer thinks there should be aide in the United States, then, in fact, the disability may be prevented from coming to the United States simply because they can’t travel without their aide. And applying it to an age with disability in another country and immigration law that prevents prevent the disability from coming to the United States. Then related to that there’s a bill that’s being proposed would restrict to allow a sibling to come into the country and allow an immigrant and here in the United States, came from another country and they have a sibling who has a disability that’s maybe currently being taken care of by a parent. The parent passes away. Sibling in the United States want to bring the person so they can help them, maybe they have intellectual disability or really need the family support, whatever, some of the things considered in the current proposal may limit ability for someone to petition to come to the country and another potential discriminatory effect for immigration laws affecting people with disabilities. Those are 1349 big issues in terms of getting people into the country or allowing them to stay with disabilities. Another issue we are looking into and there’s been development on this is right to an attorney and immigration proceeding. So there’s no right to an attorney and immigration proceeding, not criminal, it is a civil procedure and someone with disability, because the disability doesn’t understand the proceedings up until very recently, they had no right to have an attorney appointed to make sure understood or help them through the process and stand United States. There’s recent court decision in California that basically told immigration officials they have to appoint an attorney for someone who has a serious mental illness and administration recently set a policy. Not able to see the actual words the policy but last month they did say that they were going to appoint attorneys to someone that immigration believed had serious mental illness or mental disorder, so probably apply that to folks at intellectual disabilities, mental health disabilities, and that’s a step in the right direction. Policy to change that in the limb and there’s some language in the current bill, at least last I saw, that would actually require attorney to be appointed with severe mental disorders what the language says in the bill to have assistant of the council to allow them to stay in the United States and not get deported. One final quick thing, and I know I’m running out of time here, another issue really for decade or more and kind of touched on this a little bit, trying to see if someone with a mental disability and basically mental or any disability but folks with mental development of disabilities is trying to use a refugee statute or to keep the person in the country if they are going to be subject to persecution in another country because of their mental or developments of disability. This unfortunately no success in the courts. There’s been one attempt that was unsuccessful and push them as legal issue as a way as Michelle said someone here forced to go back to the country if they are going to face persecution in that country as way to keep them in the United States. A lot of legal technicalities but an interesting issue I think is important to try to push.
Jessica: Thank you, David about the legislation being considered and older issues, so thank you for joining us for that. Our last speaker is from Arizona disability law and replacing Jennifer who got called on work today. So Jennifer sends her apologize and Asim, can you introduce yourself and talk about five or six minutes of how you see the issues?
Speaker: Hi, first would like to thank you, Jessica, and the organizer’s forum for having me. I’m at the disability law and work with clients with mental illness, so what we have seen as far as intersection between immigrants and people with disabilities is many immigrants with disabilities, especially those with mental illness are held in detention facilities and many many immigrants that are held in the detention with the disability would either be released or allowed to stay in the United States continue to be detained because of a mental illness or other disability and the reason for this is immigration courts are often resistant to releasing immigrants with mental illness often because of stigma surrounding people with mental illness but also because many judges are uninformed about the availability of services in the community. So there’s an organization here in Arizona that represents immigrants that have been detained in their immigration proceedings. It is called Florence immigration refugee rights projects. So a lot of our work with immigrants with disabilities is assisting immigration when they have a client with mental illness. We will. They will often reach out to us for information and provide them with a lot of information about the availability mental health services in the community. For example, in Arizona system with an individual can be designated seriously mentally ill and with this SMI designation they have become eligible for medication, case management, crisis services and number of other mental health services so provided immigration with information about how to get SMI evaluation done for the individual and help the designation so that they can have services when they are released from the detention facility. We have also provided information about enrolling in Medicaid and information about the availability of housing for individuals with mental illness. Basically provided information for their clients and then they’re able to their attorneys are able to inform the immigration court that these services are available in the community and that the individual would be eligible to the services if they were released and able to help a lot of immigrants with mental illness believe the detention facility and stay in the United States and stay in the community. People with mental illness and not competent in understanding and no rules in the immigration system to make sure individuals being detained and going to immigration court and competent to understand the proceedings. Often problem with immigrants with mental illness and really don’t understand what’s going on and hard to watch care about immigration reform. I think just as people with disabilities make up a large percentage in American citizens, harsh percentage of citizens to the United States also have disabilities and it is always better for people with disabilities including immigrants in the community rather than be incarcerated due to lack of services. I think it is just important for immigrants with disabilities as disability community at large that they are able to be released from incarceration and receive the services they need in their community and so I also think it is important community organizers to tell members about the fact that many immigrants do have disabilities and immigration system would improve lives of immigrants with disabilities and giving them access to the services they need to be independent and live in the community and also fewer immigrants with disabilities would end up in detention some aves if services are made available to them to them if they have a crisis. I think it is very performance that we understand and there are immigrants with disabilities just as there are American Citizens with Disabilities and we should try to ensure that immigrants with disabilities get the same access to service as others, including the services to be independent and contribute to the communities. Again, I would like to thank the organizer’s forum for having me and if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them.
Jessica: Thank you. We appreciate you stepping in on short notice. I will go ahead and since they have. We have a relatively small call today, I will take the discussion off mute. Hang on one second. Everybody should be un muted and thank all of our speakers again. We have 15 minutes and go ahead and open it up to questions and comments.
Speaker: This is Adrian Lobby, I have a question. It has been my understanding path to become an immigrant is so difficult that the people who end up getting through the barriers to get here tend to be physically strong and mentally very healthy. I realize that, of course, they also do a lot of the dirty hard work and there’s a lot of injuries involved in that kind of work, but I wonder if you could kind of correct my perception if I’m off and give me some reality check on it.
Joe: A lot of people unauthorized they come to the country on Visa and overextend the Visas and a lot of people with disabilities that would kind of fall into the category. I heard stories of parents that have brought their kids with disabilities to the U.S. in search of better services or education. Like we do have a they do have to provide appropriate education. I think there’s a lot more people with disabilities than we think there are.
Michelle: I work daily with a group who have the group is (indiscernible) I don’t ask if you are documented or not and we find there’s a large population of undocumented Latinos with disabilities, and not just Latinos but disabilities as well and a lot of Latinos and approach them as we start talking or whatever, and I don’t qualify because I don’t have a status and they’re fearful of participating in a support group and advocate for the rights that they do have even though they don’t have any status because they fear if they go out there and advocate for those rights, they’re going to be punished by being sent back to their countries and if they have if they have little services, then not getting anything. So it is kind of hard to keep a group of people. Not completely but managed pretty well. Not to brag, of course, but I’m not I know how hard it is to go out there and ask for services and ask for language barrier and how hard it is for finally being speak up and say oh, well, I want to serving with I want to work, there’s no doubt about it, but there’s a lot of barriers will I be employed and that’s what I see on a daily basis pretty much.
Jessica: Other questions or comments? I have a question. I get to jump in since no one has yet. I feel like immigration often gets seen as a very partisan issue with conservatives being and Republicans specifically coming off as kind of eight immigrant or anti immigration reform and Democrats and liberals on the other side. Obviously legislation being considered that’s a little bit different but that’s the way it often gets framed. I feel like within the disability community or rights movement there’s a feeling of immigration is decisive issue, so we shouldn’t talk too much about it because we don’t want to split the disability community so I just wonder what do you say to that concern?
Michelle: I’m sorry I talk too much, I believe, so in the work I do, some dividing among disability committee and disabled but unfortunately there’s some cases that I have seen that are oh well, I have a disability but I have access to services and need services and what I when encounter the situations and unite us people with disabilities regardless of any race and status and person for person acquired a disability and now in need of services but not able to obtain them due to their status, all I want to do is like and last speaker mentioned want to live independent life but I’m sure when they came over and immigrated to the country like come in view of getting having a better life, not knowing that they would have acquired a disability or if they already had a disability because they were born with one and wanted to be able to come to have better what they thought would be better for them. So I think we have to unite as people with disabilities overall, that’s my last comment on that.
Joe: I would say, you know, at least this time around there’s a lot of bipartisan agreement and you see people really stepping up and being champions on both sides people like Senators McCain and Marco Rubio and I have to give them respect for sticking neck out on this issue, and the other thing, you know, I think just on the connection between disability and immigration, not many have brought up issues, and when they hear about them, there’s opportunity to get both sides to agree on the issues. Like the issue that Michelle talked about, the medical repatriation. I mean that is just plainly a horrible issue and if we can’t get people on both sides to see how wrong that issue is, I mean I just I just can’t believe we can’t bring people together on an issue like that.
Jessica: Thank you. I appreciate the comments on that. Who else has a question or comment?
Speaker: I have another one but certainly will put it over to somebody else since I started it out.
Jessica: You can do it again.
Adrian: Prioritizing and change the ways and resources, there seems to be two kind of directions to go. One is to work and organize among immigrants themselves and other is to work within the movement that exists which tends to be fairly wide and have a lot of racist assumptions and stereotypes. How do you think about is it a good idea to start working with the people you have and try to change attitude and racism workshops and that kind of thing? Or just try to get more people who have a better understanding of this because they live the reality. I guess that’s a hard question.
>> Joe: I think one of the things that I have enjoyed is, you know, we have joined a lot of coalitions like immigrant right coalitions that currently exist, and that’s been just amazing because we are like the only voice really, you know, for people with disabilities and seniors. Like in that coalition. So they have really kind of welcomed us because we brought up ideas that they never thought of really. They never really thought about, you know, how does this impact people with disabilities and then, you know, vice versa I think that’s the group that’s really pushing, you know, the issues forward. So I think trying to join forces with those coalitions and have a disability presence is a good first step.
Michelle: As I mentioned before when I was talking about how we could get involved, we here here has been wonderful coalition with immigrant rights organization who are not people who have no disabilities at all. So when we went in there with them and we have been partnering for quite awhile now, we were the first ones to talk about the disability. You know, how does disability relate to the topics they were talking about. Employment, immigration, education, you know, you name it, so we let them know how it is that we we do have a voice in all of these topics we were talking about and now with the immigration reform being proposed, we were we brought to their attention and they have been really, really encouraging and helpful and getting education to the community with and without disabilities about how it impacts how the immigration reform will impact Latinos or immigrants with disabilities. I think it is very, very important that we form coalition or partnerships with organizations that are, you know, already working on the issue, and just bring the disability piece, if you may, into the whole conversation.
Diane: You know, I went to a similar coalition in the Chicago area about 15 years ago that was working on broader immigration issues and Medicaid, accessibility and one important thing that they did for me because I was a lot younger and I didn’t know anything at all, still don’t know enough, was they explained the ways in which the undocumented immigrant population pays taxes and there’s quite a few ways, obvious ones like sales tax and more complicated ways that are between employers and other players in the Federal and state system and people don’t know that and look at disabled people in general as drain on society and add on document, even more so and I think it is important to get the real facts out there and I don’t think in the general public they are out there.
Michelle: Whole immigration stuff, sometimes it is kind of blurry in the community as a hole, disability or non disability. So we always have to be up to date on what’s going on. Yes, when we are when you add on the issue of undocumented disability trying to get services, person with a disability, it is mind boggling how will we do that? How we advocate for a person who’s undocumented, has a disability and wants to to certain point get services and again, we have seen here even in this immigration proposal that we are going to going to have a wait period of what, 13, 15 years in order to get some services. I think that’s just horrible. How can person a person might pass away, excuse me for being so blunt, but person might pass away before they even get the services. As a matter of fact, there was an immigrant from Asia with a disability who it is sad to say, but the day that he was being buried by his family is when they get a letter of oh, you’re now a U.S. citizen or president, sorry. How can we change this? I guess it is a question of how people how do you think we could maybe change that aspect of it because why is it that we have to wait years and years for something that we know we wait 13 or 15 years.
Jessica: I hate to cut us off on a question but we are over the hour so we will have to end it because our captioner needs to go. And I’m sure all of you need to go and that question we could take to the FaceBook page or the Yahoo list serve and like I mentioned we have another call next month in time. It is Tuesday, June 18th. So please mark your calendars. Hopefully some of you will be able to join us for that, and I would say let’s put that question on the agenda of what can we do? How can we be working in our own communities to organize around some of the issues that came up today? So really big thank you again to Michelle, Joe, David and Asim, what a wonderful group of speakers, so thank you for all the great insight and experience and wisdom that you shared. Thank you to everybody else for joining us. Please be sure and spread the word to your friends and colleagues about the organizer’s forum and we hope to talk to you all soon.
This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Real time Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.