Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Robert Wortham,
 Associate Editor,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Rebecca Adams,
 UNC-Greensboro

Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Catherine Harris,
 Wake Forest
 University

Ella Keller,
 Fayetteville
 State University

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

William Smith,
 N.C. State University

Editorial Assistants

John W.M. Russell,
 Technical
 Consultant

® 

Volume 9, Number 2

Fall/Winter 2011
 

The UNCG Center for New North Carolinians:
University Research and Service for Immigrant Empowerment

by

Richard Bailey

University of North Carolina-Greensboro
 

Background:

    People in North Carolina and the Southeastern United States have traditionally thought of the population as being divided into two groups: African American and Caucasian (forgetting about the historic American Indian population).  In the last thirty years, however; the population and the paradigm have begun to shift.  North Carolina is now a multi-cultural state, home to immigrants from many countries.  After the Vietnam War, Southeast Asian refugees began to be settled across the United States.  North Carolina, with its strong church influence and entry-level job opportunities in manufacturing, became a model refugee resettlement area for people from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. 

    In the 1990's, Hispanic/Latino   (1)  in-migration grew more rapidly in North Carolina than in any other state, with growth rates in some other Southeastern states close behind. (The 2010 census shows continued growth.) Most Latino immigrants to North Carolina are from Mexico, though other parts of Latin America are also well represented. These immigrants come to fill job openings in manufacturing, construction, and service industries.  They joined a pre-existing Latino farm labor population, who came to North Carolina in increasing numbers as part of the east coast migrant agricultural stream that passed through the state.  North Carolina is usually ranked as the fifth largest farm worker state in the nation, second only to Florida in the East Coast migrant labor stream, and 90% of agricultural workers in North Carolina are Latino. It is reasonable to assume that about one hundred thousand farm workers pass through North Carolina annually, and a majority of this population is Mexican nationals. (2)

    In 1986, Congress passed an Immigration Reform Act which provided a pathway to citizenship for migrant farm workers who had no record of crime.  This provided an opportunity for farm workers to drop out of the migrant stream, establish residence and find ongoing work. 
Beginning in the early 1990's North Carolina and other parts of the Southeast began to experience an economic boom, especially in manufacturing and agribusiness. In addition to growth in textiles and furniture manufacturing (the cornerstones of the North Carolina manufacturing economy), poultry and hog processing industries further strengthened the rural economies supplemented by urban construction and provided year-round employment.  (3)

    The newly established immigrant/refugee communities continued to build on themselves. New refugee communities were built on established resettlement systems. Immigrant workers brought families and spread the message of job opportunities. Growing and newly established ethnic communities provided a support system that immigration theorist Alejandro Portes and others describe as ethnic enclaves.  (4)These ethnic enclaves become a magnet and establish culturally appropriate systems to further support newcomers until they are successfully integrated into mainstream society.

    North Carolina planners in higher education were aware of the changing demographics of the nineties. University systems are responsible for moving their constituencies to higher levels of education in accordance with institutional norms and perceived economic needs.  They are a complex network that includes many stakeholders.  State universities have particular social responsibility because they are also part of the governmental system that addresses educational and economic training needs, and because a portion of their mission and funding comes from state governmental authority and direction.  The state university system in North Carolina, known as the University of North Carolina, is governed by a statewide board of governors.  While each of the seventeen schools of the university system has some autonomy, they function under the authority of the state level Board of Governors.

    In response to the immigrant influx, the former Chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), Dr. Patricia Sullivan, established a university-wide task force to investigate the burgeoning immigrant population in the state and make recommendations regarding the university's response to this demographic shift in 1999.  Though developed initially in response to the new Hispanic/Latino population, the task force quickly recognized that its charge needed to also acknowledge other new immigrant populations residing in the state. 

    After a two-year study, the Task Force recommended the establishment of a Center for New North Carolinians at UNCG under the authority of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors.  (At that time, the UNC system procedure was that a center that was to serve the state as opposed to the specific institution needed Board of Governors' approval and that it needed to declare whether it was primarily "research focused" or "service focused.")  Chancellor Sullivan proposed that the Center serve as a statewide resource for the University of North Carolina higher education system concentrating on outreach, research, evaluation, training and community collaboration, and its classification would be "service focused."  The Center would facilitate leadership development within the new North Carolinian populations as part of their integration process.

    The issue arose as to how and where the Center would be placed within the university. After administrative discussion at UNCG, the dean of the UNCG School of Human Environmental Sciences (HES), Dr. Laura Sims, was invited to house the Center in the HES unit, building on the HES history of professional programming in human services, and building on a cluster of immigrant services programs affiliated with the Department of Social Work in HES.  This core of existing immigrant outreach programs under the Department of Social Work would become the initial base for the Center.

    The Chancellor submitted this proposal to the Board of Governors, and the establishment of the Center was authorized effective March, 2001.  Though there were no monies authorized or available in the State budget for the Center, the Board of Governors and UNCG believed that the existing grant-funded projects in the Department of Social Work would provide a sufficient base to launch the Center, and the director of those three programs, this author, would serve as the initial director of the new Center.  The three pre-existing immigrant outreach projects were collectively known as the ACCESS Program: Accessing Cross-Cultural Education Service Systems.  These initial projects were: AmeriCorps ACCESS Project, a statewide immigrant services initiative that had started in 1994; Immigrant Health ACCESS Project (IHAP), 1998; and the statewide Interpreter ACCESS Project (IAP), 1999.

    The Center concept was in accordance with UNCG's mission to conduct community outreach and would build on the university's unique history.  Historically, UNCG had begun as the state's Women's College, with commitment to the education of females in the state. It became coed in 1963. UNCG prides its commitment to diversity and has the most minority students of any of the historically white state universities. 

    CNNC developed an advisory board made up of representatives from funding sources, state government, pubic schools, other nonprofits serving immigrants, university administrators, and immigrant community representatives. They refined the mission and crafted a strategic plan in 2003 that has continued to serve as the guiding document for the center. The plan included five goals plus three to five objectives under each goal.

    The Center for New North Carolinians will build bridges among immigrant populations and existing communities throughout the State of North Carolina by providing:
 

• Outreach and Educational Programming
• Research and Evaluation
• Information Services
• Technical Support 
• Immigrant and Refugee Leadership Development.

The goals were: 

1. Create opportunities for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to achieve its strategic goals of nurturing a university community that reflects and embraces the increasing diversity of North Carolina. 
2. Become the leading Center for research and development on issues related to North Carolina's immigrant and refugee communities in the areas of demography, ethnography, and best practices in cross-cultural health, human services and economic development.
3. Build on the strengths of immigrant & existing community for the purpose of mutual benefit.
4. Help the local community adapt to the rapid demographic changes in the areas of health, education and economic development.
5. Further develop an internal infrastructure that will ensure short and long term goal attainment and overall success of the Center.

    The Center typically has averaged about fifteen staff based at the Center office as well as over 50 AmeriCorps members across the state.  A slight majority of the staff are themselves immigrants, and including the AmeriCorps members on staff, represent over fourteen countries of origin and twelve languages.  Funding has been almost entirely grant based.  Though some grants end and new ones start, the funding has stayed consistently in the $1.2 to $1.5 million range. For many of the staff, employment at the Center is one of their first professional experiences. Several of the CNNC staff are also students in higher education.  Due to the variation in grants and their objectives, and the challenges with aligning them to the Center's mission, there is some variation in services each year. However, the Center consistently functions as an immigrant leadership development resource for the state and for various immigrant communities. 

    Programs are organized around several specific outreach and research projects. they include the following:

AmeriCorps ACCESS Project:

    AmeriCorps was a new federal initiative beginning in 1994, whereby grantees recruited and organized AmeriCorps members to provide community service over the course of a year.  Members received a modest stipend and an educational scholarship upon completion of their year of service.  AmeriCorps is designed as a domestic Peace Corps.  The AmeriCorps ACCESS Project also began in 1994 with a focus on immigrant support systems, and began with a statewide immigrant needs assessment conducted by the UNCG Department of Social Work.  Today, over fifty AmeriCorps ACCESS members each year are placed with nonprofit organizations across North Carolina.  These nonprofit organizations must have immigrant outreach as part of their mission.  They include a range of organizations from school systems to grass roots immigrant community based groups. 

    The AmeriCorps ACCESS Project recruits workers, called "members," from both the mainstream and immigrant communities.  Typically about half of the members are immigrants, a majority of that group being Latino.  All members must be U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and have some English ability, but there are no stipulations on eligibility requirements for the provision of services to clients.  Members typically include individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, such as factory workers who do AmeriCorps in their off time, young Latina women who do AmeriCorps as their first community experience outside the home, professionals who are unable to practice their profession in the U.S. because of credentialing issues, college students in combination with their studies, and some clergy and some retirees.  All members receive training in specialized areas including cross-cultural communication, community development and nonprofit management, human service eligibility, immigration law, and other needs identified by participating agencies.  Bilingual members receive special professional interpreter training.  Those who successfully complete the program year also receive a credential in Cross Cultural Human Services that can be used to enhance future employment.

    Members are placed with nonprofit organizations across the state serving refugees and immigrants.  The largest concentration of sites is in the Triad, but they extend from Wilmington to Asheville in a typical year. There are approximately 30 partner organizations any given year, and they serve as a significant network for immigrant issues across the state.

    Several hundred AmeriCorps alumni are now spread throughout the state, many of them having begun careers in human services and/or immigrant advocacy.  The project functions as a leadership development program, community development resource, and support system for social change and equality.

CNNC Research Fellows:

    This initiative began in 2005, partially as a spin off from an AmeriCorps initiative and also growing out of the preceding Immigrant Research Support Group that started meeting at the CNNC in 2002.  Research Fellows are drawn from the academic community and from professionals in nonprofit agencies who serve immigrants. Fellows adopted as their purpose their first year: Strengthening Immigrant Communities through Research in Best Practices for Program and Community Development.

    While most of the academics have come from UNCG, neighboring universities in the NC Piedmont have also been involved and an occasional faculty researcher from other states.  Participant numbers range from 20 to 30 in average years. The standard format is to meet monthly or bimonthly in an informal gathering, usually at an immigrant service site or CNNC partner organization. Fellows get a tour or presentation from host of the meeting site, update one another on their own projects, and build collaborative networks when appropriate. They typically adopt a special project to sponsor during the academic year. This has often been hosting academic conferences or symposiums on immigrant related issues.

Immigrant Health ACCESS Project (IHAP): 

IHAP has been funded by the Moses Cone Health Foundation since 1998 in order to reduce hospital costs, provide access to services, and address issues of cultural competency. It is specific to Guilford County.  Working with IHAP, lay health advisors from different immigrant populations in the county help their communities gain access to health services.  IHAP staff provide interpretation, enrollment into the local health care system, health and wellness training for their respective communities, and offer cultural competence training for providers.   Specific goals vary depending on the intent of the funding agency for any given year. The program staff also serve as bilingual and bicultural liaisons between their communities and local service providers.  It is not mandatory for project staff to hold academic degrees, but staff members are required to possess bilingual and bicultural skills, and they have gone through the AmeriCorps ACCESS training program. 

Interpreter ACCESS Project (IAP): 

    IAP was started in 1999 as a program to train professional interpreters and to provide interpreter services for refugees.  At that time the funds originated in the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and were administered through the State of North Carolina.  While most Latinos were ineligible for the interpreter services, they were eligible to participate in training.  The Center follows nationally-recognized standards in professional interpretation and has developed a training program emphasizing professional best practices with a focus on cultural competency.  IAP recruited bilingual trainees, trained them in professional skills, and marketed their professionalism.  Though funding sources have varied over the decade, hundreds of people have been trained across the state annually.   This has led to job opportunities in human services for many graduates of the training program.

   IAP advocates for compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assuring that federally funded agencies provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services.  The Act mandates that providers not require their clients to pay for interpreter fees, nor should they need to use family members to serve as their interpreters in confidential health and social service appointments. The IAP has been working with national consultants and NC human service providers since 2004 to design and develop a health and human services certification program unique to North Carolina. Initial research and piloting has been completed. As of this writing, the North Carolina Professional Interpreter Association, a nonprofit that grew out of the trained interpreter pool in the state, is exploring how it might partner with the CNNC in providing a certification process for trained professional interpreters.

    The IAP project also offers fee-for-service contracts to human service providers in several languages. Contracted interpreters who specialize in specific languages and cultures assist health and education providers via professional interpretation and translation. 

United Way of Greater Greensboro: 

    In 2005, the Center was approved as a United Way agency doing outreach to immigrant populations. Initial approval was difficult for both the university and the United Way because a distinction had to be made assuring that the university grantee was using the funds exclusively for direct services. A unique program was initially funded, Thriving at Three, to assist Latino families with young children and special needs. United Way has recently funded expanded services through the Center to provide intensive services to refugees and immigrants in selected impacted neighborhoods. This is built on the traditional community center approach to services and is discussed below in another section. 

Cultural Competence Training and Networking:

    CNNC has built a network of staff and consultants from within various immigrant communities across the state.  Most CNNC program staff are themselves immigrants who have gone through Center training programs and are graduates of the AmeriCorps ACCESS Project.  Some of these people have now enrolled as students at UNCG or other institutions of higher education in the state.  Other professionals, researchers, and educators with immigrant backgrounds are attracted to the Center, its network and its support systems.  Many serve as excellent trainers who draw on their own personal immigrant experiences as well as their professional skills.  These professionals and educators become a consultant pool for CNNC when appropriate projects develop. 

Internships and Service Learning:

    Almost all systems of higher education and some high school programs have service learning and internship requirements.  The Center now has an ongoing flow of faculty and students seeking volunteer and internship experiences with immigrant communities as part of their teaching and learning experience.  CNNC is able to place some of the students with partner organizations, both immigrant and mainstream.  Other interns in social work, nutrition, public health, physical education, foreign languages, and other departments do internships directly under the center in some of its outreach projects. This initiative is not limited to UNCG but draws on the other institutions of higher education in the area as well. Notable mention would go to Guilford College which has made an institutional commitment to engage in some of the service projects maintained through the Center. 

Glen Haven, Avalon, GEAR UP:

    Currently there are three neighborhood sites in greater Greensboro where the Center organizes concentrated services on site for refugee and immigrant communities and relies heavily on volunteers, interns, and partner organizations for collaboration and support. They become leadership development programs for the residents as the newcomers learn US systems and provide input into programming. Glen Haven (the name of a predominantly refugee apartment complex), has its roots going back to 1996 when an AmeriCorps ACCESS member started a tutoring project for Montagnard families and used Guilford College students as the tutors while also partnering with Lutheran Family Services Refugee Program and Guilford County Schools.  That program grew to include several more partners, moved to new sites, and additional refugee groups. Avalon (the name of another apartment complex) began in 2008 with a similar design, but targeted African and other Asian refugees resettled by the African Services Coalition. In addition to tutoring and some case management, these sites have developed community gardens, computers for community use, and even a community laundromat which serves as a community gathering and socializing activity.  Both of these sites have multiple partners and recently were approved as United Way funded sites.  GEAR UP (initials for several partner organizations involved) began in 2010 and targets a mobile home park that is home to hundreds of Latino families. Several programs including tutoring for children and English language training for parents, conversation clubs, and leadership development activities are provided in cooperation with Reedy Fork Elementary, the designated elementary school in the neighborhood. 

    Beginning in July of 2011, as part of a university restructuring, CNNC was moved to the Provost's Office under the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, Dr. Terri Shelton. This new placement is expected to facilitate greater student and faculty participation across school and departmental lines, thus enhancing both the service learning and the research components of the center.  The Vice Chancellor invited the founding CNNC director, this author, to return and serve as director for another year during the transition. During this time, the Center and the university will reassess how to capitalize on the resources of the CNNC and its community networks for community based research purposes. It will also conduct a search for a new permanent director. The founding director has stepped down twice in the past in order to facilitate greater institutionalization of the center. New director searches in those periods were unsuccessful and interim directors were recruited. The director skill set needed is nontraditional, spanning program management experience with diverse cultures plus academic research ability. 

    However, with an updated vision for the Center, it is expected that a new director will be found in 2012 to move the center into an expanded role in research and service learning as the university addresses ongoing changes in immigrant demographics for the state.

    Most public universities are partially driven by research requirements.  For faculty this includes the need to publish, and for universities, the need to bring grants into the university.  While CNNC actively seeks grants on its own to provide services, conduct research, and assure infrastructure, it also serves as a clearinghouse and resource for faculty in various departments of the university and from neighboring universities.  CNNC has often served as a point of entry into immigrant communities for faculty seeking to do immigrant-related research.  University research grants from different schools and departments sometimes partner with the Center for immigrant related expertise. With growing focus on community based research in academia and the immigrant network that the Center represents, it provides an opportunity for expanded university research. 

    Regardless of immediate political trends or immigration law modifications, most of the new North Carolinians are here to stay.  Many immigrants who initially believed that they would eventually return to their native countries change their minds.  Children are born here, and the U.S. becomes their home.  Ethnic institutions and resources are developing in North Carolina increasing the state's multicultural capacity.  While many immigrant groups exist in North Carolina, the Latino population has reached a critical mass.  North Carolina, already a multicultural state, will increasingly become a bilingual state for Spanish and English.

    The second generation, the children of new North Carolinians, are becoming leaders in processes of acculturation in part because they are the new bilingual and bicultural resources for the state.  They are the natural culture brokers. It is important that they be trained for their critical roles.  Many of their parents are newcomers in working class jobs. Many newcomer adults have limited education, poor English language skills, low wages, and limited legal rights. Because of language barriers, credentialing issues, and discrimination, even those with advanced education may have difficulty finding employment appropriate to their level of education. As public education addresses this issue, the second generation can move their communities closer to structural equality for the benefit of all.

    Native-born U.S. citizens are recognizing that, regardless of their feelings about these newcomers, they are their neighbors.  Newcomers often bring strong commitment to democracy and a strong work ethic. They may bring cultural practices that strengthen the broader community. The history of the United States is built upon the acculturation of newcomers.  In spite of conflicts, many within business and government recognize that newcomers are economic and cultural resources for the future.  Newcomers have allies within Anglo American and African American communities to assist them in achieving greater social and economic parity.  As the process of seeking equitable integration of immigrants as new North Carolinians continues, there is much to be learned from the African American struggle for Civil Rights.
 

(1) I use the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" interchangeably, using "Latino" in most social contexts, and "Hispanic"” in census references.  There is a debate within Hispanic/Latino communities about which term is a better choice.  Hispanic is the term used by many government agencies, such as the Census, however those who prefer Latino see it as a term that refers more to the geographical area, where as Hispanic is derived form the word Espanol, or Spain.  The Spanish came to the area now known as Latin America as "conquistadors" or conquerors and brought African people as slaves.  They wiped out much of the indigenous and African populations, from which many current Latinos derive their ancestry.
 Return to the text of the article.

(2) US Department of Labor.  Office of Program Economics.  Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS).  1990, Washington DC: published 1991.   Return to the text of the article.

(3) Graves, William.  "The Economy." an update to The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for a New Century UNC Press, 2000.  Available at www.ncatlasrevisted.org 
(accessed January 5, 2005).
 Return to the text of the article.

(4)Portes, Alejandro. Immigrant America.  p. 93-140.  Compares the first generation immigrant community to the second generation ethnic enclave community. Return to the text of the article..