Silicon Valley Community Foundation Will Work With County Government to Help Undocumented Immigrant Families
Mountain View, California (PRWEB) March 06, 2015 -- By unanimous vote of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, Silicon Valley Community Foundation will receive $1.8 million in funding to support undocumented immigrants eligible for administrative relief in the immigration process. The funds were approved Feb. 26 and are a part of the county’s Immigrant Family Relations Implementation Plan.
An estimated 50,000 residents of Santa Clara County are eligible for help under the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programs. Unfortunately, these residents can fall prey to scams as they pursue help under these programs, which are designed by the federal government to provide temporary relief from the threat of deportation to certain groups of undocumented immigrants, including those who were brought to the U.S. as children. SVCF has spent many years helping to develop a network of immigration legal services organizations that provide access to high quality, affordable legal services. These organizations help immigrants with everything from guidance through the citizenship process to low-cost legal representation.
“The Board of Supervisors' action is a clear endorsement of SVCF’s leadership and proven track record in the immigrant legal services arena,” said Erica Wood, chief community impact officer for SVCF. “We are proud to be working with our local government to help immigrants who are striving to improve their lives, and thereby strengthen our communities.”
Under an agreement between Santa Clara County and SVCF, $1.8 million will be disbursed by SVCF during fiscal years 2015, 2016 and 2017 to the South Bay Legal Immigrant Services Network. SBLISN will use the funds for education, outreach and legal services in response to the Presidential Executive Order on Immigration issued by President Obama in November 2014.
More than one-third of the 2.5 million residents of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties are immigrants and almost two-thirds of those under the age of 18 are children of immigrants. Immigrant entrepreneurs have contributed considerably to innovation and job creation in Silicon Valley, and nearly half our workforce is foreign born.
Silicon Valley’s continued prosperity and quality of life depend on our ability to create communities that recognize immigrants as assets and that honor shared values of family, hard work and opportunity for all. SVCF believes this requires that it address the insufficient number of effective English-language learning, job training and legal services for immigrants, which are not adequate to meet current need, let alone the potential demand that will result from any significant immigration reform in the future.
To read more about SVCF’s grantmaking strategy on immigrant integration, click here.
About Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation makes all forms of philanthropy more powerful. We serve as a catalyst and leader for innovative solutions to our region’s most challenging problems, and through our donors we award more money to charities than any other community foundation in the United States. SVCF has $6.5 billion in assets under management. As Silicon Valley’s center of philanthropy, we provide thousands of individuals, families and corporations with simple and effective ways to give locally and around the world. Find out more at http://www.siliconvalleycf.org.
Sue McAllister, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, http://www.siliconvalleycf.org, +1 650-450-5513, [email protected]
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