Mayor John Cranley and the Task Force on Immigration he convened last year announced a series of recommendations this morning the mayor says are aimed at making Cincinnati the most welcoming city to immigrants in the country.
The task force announced 14 short-term, two-year goals and another nine longer-term, five-year goals designed to persuade and help immigrants settle in Cincinnati while protecting their legal rights and encouraging entrepreneurship.
“We want to be a city of growth and opportunity,” Cranley said during a news conference about the task force’s recommendations, “and we think this is the right thing to do for the economic vitality of our city.”
Among the short-term objectives the task force would like to tackle are the establishment of a center where immigrants coming to Cincinnati can find information, support and services in the community. That center, a collaboration between the city, the University of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber of Commerce, Children’s Hospital and other organizations, will start out as a website while a permanent, physical center similar to ones in Pittsburgh and Chicago is established.
“We’ll have infrastructure and support services for immigrants from around the world,” Cranley said. The mayor said UC has committed $50,000 a year to the effort, and Cranley said he’ll be asking Cincinnati City Council to approve a similar commitment. “This is a true collaboration, and it’s very inspiring to see the community come together to support something we don’t have.”
That center will help connect and coordinate the many efforts to help immigrants currently happening while looking to provide services that may not yet exist.
“We know that there are a lot of really great organizations throughout the city already doing wonderful things to serve our immigrant populations,” said Jill Meyer, President and CEO of the Cincinnati, USA Regional Chamber, which will provide staffing and other support for the center. “What you’ll see in the months ahead is us looking for new ways for this center to connect some dots and fill in the gaps that are there so that a one-stop shop is the reality for our new Cincinnatians.”
Another set of short-and-long-term goals will seek to ensure that immigrants are treated fairly and get their full legal rights. The task force calls for increased cultural sensitivity training for police, a deeper commitment by the city to punish violations of immigrants’ civil rights and calls for an ordinance from the city pledging to go after wage theft, a big issue for immigrant workers. Among the members of the task force is Manuel Perez, who works with the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, which has helped lead the conversation around wage theft in Cincinnati.
Cranley declined to comment explicitly on what effect the effort could have on the undocumented immigrant population in the region, but did point out that some of the partners in the task force are working independently on measures like ID cards for undocumented immigrants. Those IDs would then be recognized by municipal offices, including the police department.
According to data released recently by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a pro-immigration think-tank, the foreign-born population of metro Cincinnati has contributed more than $189 million in state and municipal taxes. Within the city, foreign-born residents have more than $1.5 billion in spending power, according to the data.
“Right from the start, there was a strong consensus from the members about the importance of immigrants for our city,” said task force co-chair Raj Chundur, who explained that more than 70 volunteers comprised the task-force. Those volunteers were broken up into five subcommittees covering education and talent retention, rights and safety, economic development, international attractiveness and resources and development.
Cranley says he hopes to bring ordinances associated with the task force’s recommendation to Council in the next two weeks and predicted the measures would pass easily.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 3, 2015.