New York/New England Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices Outreach Project

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) funds grants to conduct public education programs about the rights afforded potential victims of employment discrimination and the responsibilities of employers under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. §1324b. Programs funded by the OSC grant program are required to design and implement public education campaigns to address immigration related unfair employment discrimination by educating workers, employers, and the general public about the anti-discrimination provision of the INA.

The Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, Inc., in collaboration with the Farmworker Law Project (FLP) and Native American Units of Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Inc. (PTLA), will use the grant funds to distribute over 10,000 multilingual materials in New York and the New England area regarding the immigration related anti-discrimination provisions of the INA. Project activities will focus upon citizens and work-authorized non-citizens among the following three marginalized groups, all of which are especially vulnerable to immigration related employment discrimination and document abuse: migrant and seasonal farm workers in rural New York state and New England; Native Americans in New England; and the growing and diverse refugee/immigrant communities in central New York and in Maine. The campaign will utilize existing outreach networks, which have already resulted in the development of long-standing, close relationships with each of the target populations. FLP and PTLA will utilize both traditional and electronic outreach media to provide a cost-effective means of reaching the target audience with OSC educational information and increasing enforcement.

CA/NCF