Breaking news about public charge, read the latest.
Vision & History
Our Vision
A caring society where every individual is valued for their humanity, immigrants and their families thrive and are recognized as pillars of community strength, and everyone has access to life’s essentials.
Our Purpose
To build and leverage power, ensuring immigrants and their families have equitable access to quality health care, nutrition, housing, public services and economic supports.
Our Values
We believe that all people have inherent beauty, dignity, and worth by virtue of our humanity alone.
We all – no matter how much money we have or where we come from – should have equitable access to support systems that enable us to meet our needs and create thriving communities.
We believe that it is society’s responsibility and the government’s role to guarantee equitable and inclusive access to supports that ensure everyone’s ability to thrive.
We believe in the power of the collective and that all of us are needed to win. We value the knowledge, expertise, and contributions of all our PIF member organizations and leaders. And we are intentional about building spaces that are collaborative and inclusive.
We are intersectional in our approach to dismantling systemic oppression, guided by a recognition of the impact of race, color, ethnicity, class, gender and gender identity, immigration status, language, sexual orientation, disability, religious identity and others, both individually and collectively, and we use that frame to make, evaluate, and advance policy and systems change with humility and empathy.
We view advocacy on support systems and advocacy on immigrant rights as interwoven and inter-dependent.
We see abundance and know that everyone can be supported. We reject a scarcity model that intentionally divides communities and excludes people. We stand in solidarity with other justice movements.
We strive to communicate ideas and knowledge in ways we can all understand. Language justice is fundamental to our ability to build power and best meet the needs of immigrant communities.
We center and uplift multi-racial immigrant leadership and communities and ensure they are reflected in the decision-making structures in PIF. The diversity of immigrant communities from around the world is an asset for building collective power for immigrant justice.
History
Origins
In May 2017, NILC and CLASP organized a meeting of two dozen national, state, and local organizations. Those gathered all represented organizations that were committed to protecting immigrants and their families’ access to health care, nutrition programs, public services and economic support. This came to form the PIF campaign.
2018
After a draft of an upcoming NPRM was leaked, PIF leadership articulated a two-part strategy for the 60-day public comment period. By the end of the comment period in December 2018, the Trump public charge proposal had received more than 266,000 comments – a record-breaking number, overwhelming majority in opposition.
2020
During the global COVID-19 pandemic, PIF shifted heavily towards community education and making sure immigrants of all backgrounds were informed about updates to public health and vaccine access. As part of this effort, PIF produced over 50 YouTube videos in various lengths and languages.
2021
After years spent developing PIF’s structure, implementing executive and steering committees, and hiring a director to lead strategy implementation, PIF formally transitioned from a campaign to a coalition.
2022 - 2024
In 2022, a key focus of the coalition’s work was the issuance of a new public charge regulation by the Biden DHS. PIF also initiated the Herlinda Project and launched local “silo-busting” tables projects to assess capacity and power-building infrastructures that could enhance the ability to increase enrollment in public benefits among immigrant families.
Where We Are Now
Recently, PIF finalized a re-visioning process – a journey that began in an effort to renew our long-term strategic approach to address our nation’s legacy of structural racism that has denied immigrant families essential public benefits and social services. PIF continues to focus our efforts to defend and promote the rights of immigrant families to access health, nutrition, housing, and economic supports.
