Illinois Coalition For Immigrant And Refugee Rights

New americans initative program-nai fiscal year 2024 marked the 19th year of the new americans initiative. With each subsequent year, the nai improves and extends its services to all immigrant and refugee communities in illinois. As a collaborative of 52 community partners this year, we served 38,936 unduplicated people in over 50 languages.the nai provides a comprehensive integration plan that coordinates the different steps to gain citizenship, which includes helping immigrants learn english, apply for citizenship, and encourage civic engagement. For fy24, partners assisted 6,165 clients in applying for citizenship. In addition to the citizenship effort, the new americans initiative also focuses on legal support for deferred action for childhood arrivals (daca) renewals. Nai partners assisted 3,539 daca renewals in this fiscal year.in fy24, icirr partners conducted outreach to 22,094 nai-eligible participants in the state of illinois. In fy24, application processing partners assisted 9,896 people through the new americans initiative. 57% of the applications prepared, 5,654 were for participants on their pathway to citizenship through the naturalization process.

Organizing and leadership development of our member based organizations

The women, infants, & children program/wic is a joint collaboration between the illinois for immigrant and refugee rights, the illinois department of human service, and 8 ethnic, community based organizations across illinois. This program provided funding to the organizations to conduct outreach activity that informs immigrant women, infants, & children (wic) about the availability of public nutrition benefits and nutrition education services that support personal and family well-being and economic self-sufficiency, and the eligibility criteria