MOVING THE CULTURE, SHAPING OUR FUTURE

The following report looks at the impact of cultural strategy within the immigrant rights space, particularly how it helped shift public sentiment toward immigrants and sustain immigrant protections, even amidst political turmoil.

Immigrant Heritage Month (IHM) is a product of the I Stand With Immigrants (ISWI) / I Am An Immigrant (IAAI) Initiative and its commitment to inserting positive stories about immigration into the cultural zeitgeist. Over the past ten years, we’ve been joined by hundreds of organizations, community members and elected officials who want to #CelebrateImmigrants. During that time, we learned that solidarity can take a number of forms: sharing the stories of directly-impacted people or advocating for policy changes that provide immigrants greater access to opportunity. We’ve also seen that protections for undocumented immigrants have nearly quadrupled in number—from 1 in 20, to now 1 in 5 immigrants having access to programs and policies that give them more legal protections.

We are just one part of a broad ecosystem that includes storytellers who show there’s no such thing as a model immigrant, and who help override persistent fearmongering about our issue – as well as advocates who craft policy and speak to elected leaders about issues impacting their community members. Together, we have the potential to create a positive impact all across the country by speaking up and taking action—not just during moments of crisis, but every other day during the year.