When President Reagan signed the Immigration Control and Reform Act into law in 1986, more than 100,000 New Yorkers became eligible for lawful permanent residence. To help them navigate the new law, our predecessors at The Trust gathered foundation partners to form a funder collaborative called the Fund for New Citizens.
Over 37 years, the Fund has made $27 million in grants to strengthen immigrant-led organizations, challenge punitive immigration laws, promote pro-immigrant policies, and support legal services. It will close this year after awarding its final grants in November.
One of the Fund’s proudest legacies is that it helped create the New York Immigration Coalition to unite smaller immigrant-serving nonprofits across the city. We have continued to support the Coalition, now comprising nearly 200 nonprofits statewide, including its work to expand access to health care, legal services, voting, and education for students learning English.
Responding to policy change
In 1996, Congress barred the Legal Services Corporation—the largest funder of civil legal aid in the U.S.—from funding legal aid for undocumented people. In response, the Fund redoubled its grantmaking for legal services and advocacy to support undocumented New Yorkers. We helped create the Immigrant Representation Project at 26 Federal Plaza and worked with advocates and the city to add tens of millions of dollars in government funding for immigration legal services. As the Fund’s co-chair from 2010 to 2019, Shawn led its rapid response when the Obama administration created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012, allowing certain undocumented young people who had arrived in the U.S. as children to obtain work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. The Fund’s grants helped thousands of young people apply for DACA, many of whom are now today’s teachers, health care workers, and community leaders.
Immigrant-led advocacy
When Eve joined The Trust in 2019, she worked with the Fund to seek grant proposals for immigrant-led, immigrant-serving advocacy. We asked applicants to choose the issues, which let us learn about and respond to what they saw as the most important causes in their communities.
We funded emergency relief during the first Trump administration, when the federal government increased efforts to arrest and deport New Yorkers. During the pandemic, we funded efforts to get cash assistance to immigrant workers who were ineligible for unemployment benefits and federal stimulus aid.
On a personal note, we will miss the warmth and hospitality with which grantees often would greet us during site visits, reflecting the care they extend to the communities they serve. We will also miss working with our incredible donors and foundation colleagues, without whom we could not have funded this work.
The Trust continues to fund many former Fund for New Citizens’ grantees. We’re carrying the Fund’s lessons into our new collaborative, the Funds for the Newest New Yorkers, which we’re hosting in partnership with the Robin Hood Foundation to coordinate citywide efforts to support our migrant neighbors. We’re looking forward to all we’ll learn and accomplish, together.
