Immigration Programs

The Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative (CVIIC) was created in 2014 to help strengthen the regional capacity to serve immigrants with existing immigration programs, including naturalization, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) and others.

This has been our principal priority over the years.

Since its creation in 2014, CVIIC has worked with national, state and local partners to ensure the increased availability of legal services opportunities in the rural and urban communities of the Central Valley.

Legal Services Workshops for Central Valley Immigrants

In conjunction with nonprofit legal services partners, pro bono immigration attorneys, media partners, community based organizations, churches, educational institutions and public sector agencies, CVIIC has made it possible to schedule over three hundred legal services workshops. These workshops have been held in small rural communities, medium sized cities and major urban areas in the Central Valley. This has included communities in the following counties: Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare. Information about these public events is found in our events website: ValleCentral.org

The connection to programs such as New Americans Campaign (NAC), Ready California, the San Joaquin Valley Health Fund’s Immigration Cluster, and others permits us to develop and strengthen regional collaborative efforts to increase the delivery of legal services opportunities via the free workshops for naturalization or DACA. At the workshops, clients are screened for eligibility for existing forms of relief, including U-Visas, asylum, etc.

Detention and Removal Defense

In this era of increased ICE enforcement activities, CVIIC is also working with partners networks, including the Northern California Rapid Response and Immigrant Defense Network (NCRRIDN) and the Fresno County Legal Defense Fund (FCLDF) to improve the access to legal counsel for immigrants in detention and removal proceedings. Such capacity has been virtually non-existent among local non-profit agencies and there is a great need to improve such legal protection. CVIIC’s Executive Director sits on the steering committees of NCRRIDN and the FCLDF.

Thanks to the efforts of NCRRIDN, emergency response attorneys are being hired to work in strategic locations in the Central Valley.

Immigration Programs and Know Your Rights Informational Events

In addition to the free legal services workshops for the public, CVIIC works with local and regional partners to provide hundreds of know your rights opportunities each year. This includes presentations in adult schools, churches, community fairs and festivities, mobile consulate events, food distributions, clinics, parent trainings at K-12 school sites, and other locations.

The collaboration with key media partners including Univision, Radio Bilingue and Telemundo allows us to further reach thousands of people to share information about workshops or developing news items of relevance to immigrant families.