Skip to main content

Immigration

The mission of Logan Square Neighborhood Association Immigration Committee is to educate, organize, help immigrants obtain services and certifications needed for citizenship as well as advocating for comprehensive immigration reform.

 Educate and Organize to Protect and Advance the Rights of Immigrants

  • Strengthen, expand and solidify Logan Square Neighborhood Association immigration committee.
  • Defend and advocate for citizens and non-citizens on justice issues, for example day labor, immigration raids and family separation.
  • Create a Logan Square Family Support Network that includes as central component “Know Your Rights” trainings available to all LSNA member groups and others. 
  • Organize 1-2 events for the broader Logan Square community to create awareness of immigrant issue. 

Help Immigrants Obtain Services and Certifications needed for Citizenship

  • Develop and distribute informative and practical material.
  • Continue to provide citizenship workshops, citizenship loans and on site one-on-one legal services for prospective applicants
  • Explore the idea of developing citizenship schools that would engage new citizens in civic participation.

Fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

  • Organize for reform that includes eliminating the barriers to a college education for undocumented students and health care for all immigrants.
  • Participate in local actions and events that work towards reform.

Did You Know? 

  • Illinois is home to 1,782,423 immigrants, 44.4% of whom are naturalized citizens.
  • All immigrants pay taxes, state, federal and sales taxes.  It is estimated that they pay $90 to $140 billion a year.  Between 1990 and 1998 the undocumented paid $20 billion in Social Security that they can never collect!
  • The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deported a total of 393,000 people during the 2010 fiscal year.
  • If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Illinois, the state would lose $25.6 billion in economic activity, $11.4 billion in gross state product,and approximately 119,214 jobs.
  • In the Chicago Metro area, the consumer expenditures of unauthorized immigrants alone generated more than 31,000 jobs in the local economy and added $5.5 billion annually to the gross regional product.
  • The 2009 purchasing power of Illinois’s Latinos totaled $43 billion—an increase of 387.2% since 1990.
  • Immigrants are accused of refusing to learn English and to otherwise assimilate. As with prior waves of immigrants, there is a marked increase in English-language skills from one immigrant generation to the next.
  • Increased border security and the construction of border fences have done little to curb the flow of immigrants across the United States border. Instead, these policies have only succeeded in pushing border crossers into dangerous and less-patrolled regions, and increased the undocumented population by creating an incentive for immigrants not to leave.