About Us
This website is intended for use by the media, policy developers, researchers and academics, legislators, developers of state immigrant integration initiatives, immigrant advocates, teachers and other parties concerned interested in serious engagement with immigrant issues.
It is maintained by The Immigrant Learning Center®, Inc. (The ILC) of Malden, Massachusetts as part of its program to educate Americans about immigrants and immigration. The growth in the immigrant population across the United States has been accompanied by debates about the impact of immigration especially in the economic sphere. Passions understandably tend to run high in these exchanges. Reliable facts and data, on the other hand, often get shunted aside. This website addresses this dilemma by bringing accurate and easy-to access information into the center of the immigration debate.
The website is one part of The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute. Other components can be found on The ILC website (www.ilctr.org) and include:
- Commissioned research studies about Massachusetts immigrants as entrepreneurs, workers and consumers;
- Forums for educators on teaching Immigration across the curriculum;
- Summaries of key studies about immigrants on hot button issues such immigrants and jobs, taxes, use of welfare and crime and
- The Immigrant Theater Group.
It is the intent of The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc. and the University of Massachusetts Boston to work with collaborators to build the website toward comprehensive research and information about immigrants and immigration. To facilitate this process, the site provides new tools for information sharing, networking and collaboration provides a venue for inclusion of local and state research and research from previously unidentified individuals and institutions.
The need of this site emerged through a thorough examination of existing websites that provide information about immigrants and immigration. Current online sources tend to focus on very specific issues that are tied to the individual missions of their institutions. They are often difficult to access and navigate and have limited opportunities for interaction. In contrast, this site is building toward comprehensive research and information across the range of issues in immigration with easy navigation and opportunities for users to both contribute content to the site and interact with one another.
The initial collaborators on this project are The Immigrant Learning Center and three research institutes at the University of Massachusetts Boston — the Institute for Asian American Studies, the Mauricio Gaston Institute and the William Monroe Trotter Institute.
It is planned to continuously enlarge the circle of collaborators to facilitate information and research discussion, collaboration and sharing. In turn, this will enable advocates, integration planners, policymakers, researchers and members of the media to develop greater collaborative efforts.
Contact: Denzil Mohammed, public.education@ilctr.org