VAAP & partners Seek VT “ONA”
The Trump Administration promises immigration reform that could topple our service sector if we don't address existing problems now:
2025 will exacerbate our collective struggles to address the crises of Vermont’s immigrant populations' urgent unmet psychosocial, legal, health, and material needs.
2025 will also distract from our efforts to foster an accessible, equitable, inclusive environment where immigrant populations cannot only arrive but also THRIVE - a non-negotiable for Vermont's future economic and social viability.
As a direct legal services provider working statewide on high stakes immigration matters, VAAP feels the impact of our state's impressive but uncoordinated model of community based service delivery and its lack of a centralized clearinghouse for information sharing, referral making, and issues resolution. We observe direct service providers like us scrambling to redress individual injustices using individual solutions, but also systemic injustices with individual solutions.
As depicted in this pictorial, available for download, potential immigration legal clients and their supporters are self-referring to every office all at once, triggering confusing and duplicative intake responses. Offices are cross-referring to one another, furthering duplicated intake. Despite the intake duplications, a person might make it through everyone's screening systems only to learn no organization has the resources or expertise to assist. Systemic lack of intake capacity is distracting from actual service provision. Lay advocates are filling in service gaps with good intentions but at the risk of harmful unauthorized or unsupervised practice of complex, high stakes law. We are leaking resources and undermining the potential economic impact of immigration legal services, as depicted in this infographic, also available for download.
Why VAAP supports an ONA for VT
The good news is that over 20 states have already begun addressing these problems, and not just for the legal services sector, by creating a state-supported Office of New Americans (ONA) equivalent. It's like the State Refugee Office, but with the much broader mandate of championing the needs and rights of ALL immigrants in the state regardless of status or circumstances of arrival. As New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maine, and Washington have found, ONA equivalents eliminate duplicative intake systems across providers, reduce service gaps as organizations cross-refer, allow for more meaningful demographic data collection, and position service sectors to access outside resources more effectively. In sum, expanding state partners' internal coordination with each other, as well as their external collaboration with the national Office of New Americans State Network, allows robust community sectors like ours to better address the complex needs of its growing immigrant communities.
This is why VAAP supports the establishment of an ONA equivalent for Vermont. This fall, we gathered with diverse community partners across disciplines and regions to explore opportunities to collaborate on establishing an ONA equivalent for Vermont. You can review a history of these gatherings below. As VAAP has learned over the course of these gatherings, the mandate of an ONA equivalent can include charging a cabinet-level director with ensuring government accountability for the rights and obligations owed to immigrant populations. It can include empowering the director to help communities solve systemic injustices with systemic solutions. It can include improved service coordination, equitable grantmaking, or improved demographic study. It can position states to more easily access available resources to address intersecting public policy issues like disaster preparedness and workforce development.
Focusing on the legal services sector that VAAP champions, coordinated intake would conserve attorney resources so we can do what we do best: assist noncitizens to invoke immigration legal claims and defenses that enable their full and safe participation in the regulated economy; protect noncitizens from harmful and wasteful enforcement and removal proceedings; and ensures an inclusive and prosperous future Vermont for all not withstanding Vermont's critical workforce and working age taxpayer shortages.
Recall that a work authorized social security number is the necessary precursor to proving your identity with public institutions, working, opening a bank account, obtaining a REAL ID needed to travel safely between states, securing financing to own a home, run a business, or access public financial aid, and more. Work authorization is not an independent immigration benefit one can apply for and is only available incident to some other claim or defense you have filed, normally with the assistance of an attorney.
An ONA equivalent for Vermont would not be a panacea, but at least a means for evidence-based progress toward more coordinated, equitable, and impactful service delivery. Feeling impassioned? Get in touch to join our growing coalition. We are stronger together!
For context about what an ONA can do for VT’s diverse immigrant communities and why VAAP agrees with Treasurer Mike Pieciak that now’s the time to establish one in VT, refer to:
Tabled Senate Bill S.194 (2024) seeking a multiagency study on the utility and structure of an independent Office of New Americans;
VAAP’s testimony in support of related Act 105 (2024) regarding immigration legal status as an economic justice issue;
key findings from the Welcoming New Americans Symposium in June;
Vermont Poverty Law Fellow 2022-24 Maya Tsukazaki’s final report;
VAAP’s efforts to build coordination capacity for Vermont’s immigration services bar; and
research regarding the positive economic impacts of increasing access to free immigration legal services in Vermont.
For initial feedback VAAP shared with Legislative Counsel following the 8 week consultation process described below, see here. Check back for updates and contact us to join forces.
outreach EFFORTS TO DATE
Here we are tracking and sharing VAAP’s work to lift up regional grassroots efforts to create an “Office of New Americans” equivalent for Vermont.
Initial Scoping Meeting, October 1. VAAP hosted an open, hybrid meeting advertised through the Chittenden Asylum Seekers Assistance Network (CASAN) to “gut check” a SKELETAL DRAFT proposal to establish an “Office for New Americans” equivalent for Vermont. About 35 partners attended and provided a wealth of helpful feedback. Our intention was to pilot exchanging ideas in a smaller group before reaching out to partners statewide. Review our notes here. Download AI-generated notes here.
RISPNET Meeting, October 3. VAAP reported out to the Vermont Refugees and Immigrants Service Providers Network (RISPNET) chaired by the Vermont State Refugee Office about t to overwhelming support. We welcomed any stakeholders who are available and willing to take part in steering coalition-building and advocacy efforts to contact us. Review our notes here. Download AI-generated notes here.
Action Planning Subcommittee Meeting, October 11. VAAP joined a growing VT ONA “steering committee” with participation from VAAP, CASAN, the Family Room, Vermont Kin as Parents (VKAP), and Representative Leonora Dodge (D-23), as well as information-only observation by the State Refugee Office. The focus was to develop action steps to help drive ONA conversations forward. We clarified our goals of pursuing simultaneous legislative and administrative solutions to pass a law establishing a VT ONA in FY25. We also divided responsibility for research questions and the drafting of a white paper justifying the need for and benefits of a VT ONA—including a literature review of available grassroots data studies to hopefully minimize the need for further government-sponsored study. Review our notes here.
National and Regional Partners Meeting, October 17. VAAP joined “steering committee” participants from CASAN, the Family Room, and the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC) for a meeting with national ONA State Network leaders and successful ONA equivalent organizers from Maine and Massachusetts. Partners helped us to clarify strategy with respect to drafting an effective white paper, co-locating an ONA equivalent with the State Refugee Office in state government, subcontracting to existing service providers and community based organizations (CBOs) for direct service delivery, and prioritizing a legislative rather than an administrative solution. Review our meeting notes here. Review our notes here. Download Maine’s planning webinar slides here.
Uniting northern/southern VT efforts meeting, October 24. VAAP met with Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation to learn more about their parallel efforts to coordinate services and address capacity gaps through their Working Communities Challenge partnerships among other southern VT-based immigration service coordination and planning efforts. One key takeaway was the need to engage with refugee agencies and refugee service providers as key stakeholders in any state-level ONA coordination project. Another key takeaway was the need to include in our ONA needs demonstration a broader focus that grows beyond crisis response and looks downstream to thriving communities. Our ONA’s ability to audit, problem-solve, and hold accountable all agencies impacting VT’s potential to support families through crisis response and continuing through to their equitable inclusion in thriving communities will be key.
Action Planning Subcommittee Meeting, October 24. Later, VAAP joined the continually growing “steering committee” with participation from BDCC, CASAN, the Family Room, VKAP, Representative Dodge, the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO), a Association of Africans of Vermont-based partner from Connecting Cultures, and the City of Winooski. Partners merged regional conversations about the risks and opportunities of pursuing a state-based ONA equivalent for Vermont and clarified common goals, research questions, outreach strategies, and white paper co-drafters. Review our notes here.
Economic Security for All Vermonters Network Meeting, October 24. To cap off the day, VAAP joined partners at a Public Assets Institute's convening of economic justice advocates and service providers to generate input and connections on their nascent Economic Security for All Vermonters initiative. Networking in small groups, “steering committee” participants championed our ONA organizing efforts. VAAP underscored the centrality of foreign-born workers and families to Vermont’s social and economic future, and the need for initial investment in legal and social services in order to support immigrants to not only arrive but also thrive in Vermont communities long term.
Meeting with Senator Martine Laroque Gulick (D, Chittenden-Central), Lead Sponsor of S.194 (2024), October 30. Senator Gulick expressed her commitment to reintroducing a version of S.194 next session and generously welcomes the community’s input into legislative drafting, as well as any white paper(s) the community is willing and able to provide to substantiate the ONA's need and feasibility. It’s unclear whether a literature review of existing studies would be enough to circumvent VT's typical practice of formally studying appropriations-related issues first before substantively legislating them. A study period may be necessary to ensure equitable and inclusive engagement of all key players in any event. Another approach suggested by Senator Gulick is first creating an ONA Council this session and then operationalizing the ONA with staff by the second session of the biennium. Following this meeting, Jill asked the State Refugee Office whether VAAP can take the opportunity of SRO-driven 2025 legal service sector planning to confer with AALV, USCRI, and ECDC leaders about evolving ONA discussions.
Action Planning Subcommittee Meeting, November 6. Mike Zimmer of the national ONA State Network presented to attendees from ECDC, VKAP, VT Adult Learning, Winooski Working Communities Challenge, Migrant Justice, CASAN, Connecting Cultures, and VAAP. He shared with us an ONA toolkit and a treasure trove of advice based on what has working well in similarly situated states. As to next steps, there is no frontrunner strategy that attendees gravitated towards. VKAP will kindly coordinate our next meeting for the third or fourth week of November. VAAP will pause coordination of a broadly inclusive white paper at this stage and instead limit its research, writing, and publication to the legal services sector needs most clearly in VAAP’s wheelhouse. Review our notes here. Download the ONA State Network Toolkit here.
Exploring Data Tools with Syracuse University TRAC. We connected with Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a leading resource for immigration enforcement data, to explore how Vermont might implement data tracking tools similar to those TRAC customized for Maine's Office of New Americans organizers. These tools could provide invaluable insights into immigrant subpopulations and legal service needs statewide. TRAC reports to VAAP that they could customize data tracking for Vermont for one year for nominal fees that are outside of VAAP’s budget but potentially achievable in partnership with other contributing organizations.
Engaging Vermont's Economic Development Leaders throughout November. Through the course of other business, VAAP took opportunities to relay our perspective on a prospective ONA with Vermont Department of Economic Development leaders, including Commissioner Joan Goldstein and John Young, Director of the Vermont Training Program. VAAP and DED discussed how VAAP’s legal services create pathways to work authorization, contributing to workforce development pipelines—a key issue for retaining major employers like Ben & Jerry’s, Ethan Allen Furniture, and the construction sector. Thanks to John’s introduction, VAAP is now connected with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, opening doors to broader private-sector collaboration. DED leaders expressed strong interest in staying involved with ONA developments, and we'll keep them—and you—updated as VAAP’s contributions to this conversation continue.
A Vermont ONA is for EVERYONE. Please get in touch to learn more or join in!
