Urging Congress to Stand Up for Immigrant Women

Reforms in immigration laws and policies will be most effective in improving conditions of immigrant women and their families when they are grounded in an understanding of the challenges and circumstances confronted by many immigrant women in America -- including their role in the informal labor economy, their risk of domestic abuse and employer exploitation, the consequences of separation from their children, and their inability to access critical protections and services.

Legal Momentum is offering a set of principles to assist U.S. Congress in developing immigration and enforcement policy to help redress the too-often invisible circumstances in which many immigrant women live. 

To address the real life challenges undocumented immigrant women face, any comprehensive approach to the reform of immigration policy and enforcement must do the following:

  • Create a path to legalization that equitably values women's work, including domestic work, informal sector work, part time and contract work, by giving women credit for these forms of employment.
  • Ensure that legalization and all immigration fee structures are designed to enable all members of a family to qualify for and obtain legal status; high fees that force families to choose one person for legalization usually result in women and children remaining undocumented.
  • Promote family reunification and reduce family visa backlogs to reduce immigrant women's vulnerability to exploitation and dependency on partners, family members and employers for their immigration status and security.
  • Improve personal security and autonomy by expanding access to independent immigration status: Immigrant women's economic security is enhanced when they can maintain control over their immigration eligibility and can independently obtain legal immigration status without relying on other family members as dependant applicants.
  • Promote economic security by protecting the rights of immigrant women workers: Immigration reform and federal agency policies should ensure rights, redress, and justice for immigrant women workers who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination, trafficking, wage abuse and other forms of workplace abuse, and it should provide avenues to legalization for women working in the underground and informal economy.
  • Provide for portable work authorization. Immigrant women need portable legal status that does not tie them to specific employers to ensure autonomy and the ability to escape abusive situations in the workplace or at home.
  • Ensure access to a fair justice system for all immigrants: Language access and unrestricted access to legal representation by legal services lawyers for immigrant and limited English proficient (LEP) women is essential in the civil and criminal justice systems, particularly when many immigrants are regularly confronted with the threat of termination of parental rights, violation of statutory rights, foreclosures, criminal charges, and other complex matters.
  • Formalize access to federal and state funded public safety net benefits for lawfully present immigrants: End the 5-year bar to accessing federal means-tested benefits so that lawfully present immigrants are not barred from access to welfare, health care, child care, food stamps, and health care following the lead of the 22 states that have provided access to some or all of these important benefits and services under state law.
  • Expand access to protection and services for immigrant women victims of violence: Assure that immigrant women who are victims of violence are screened and provided with early access to benefits and social services, the ability to work legally, the immigration status for which they may be eligible and protection from detention and deportation.
  • End enforcement practices that adversely affect immigrant women and their children. Current immigration enforcement practices unnecessarily separate immigrant women from their children, result in the placement of children in foster care, and offer abusive spouses or employers a protected means of coercion.

Legal Momentum and sister organizations are standing up for immigrant women and working to urge Congress to adopt smart policy solutions as part of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Considering the real life challenges undocumented immigrant women face, any comprehensive approach to the reform of immigration policy and enforcement must take into consideration the impact of these policies on immigrant women.

Read Legal Momentum's Complete Sign-On Letter and Policy Recommendations (PDF).

Send your own message to Congress regarding immigrant women and immigration reform.