Defend & Protect Illinois Immigrant Families

The federal government is planning to force immigrant families to choose between receiving the critical benefits they need to live (healthcare, food, shelter) and any hope of obtaining long-term legal status. The planned change would make use of benefits, even by children, a virtual bar to their parents adjustment of immigration status and is a bold attack on immigrant families that would affect hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans.

No agency knows better than Legal Council the critical value healthcare is to the health and stability of all of our communities. If we want our communities to thrive, everyone must have access to the care and services they need to thrive. For this reason, Legal Council is a lead organization in the Protecting Immigrant Families Illinois coalition. In partnership with the Shriver Center, Latinos Progressando, and the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, we are building a state-based group to expand the work of the national Protecting Immigrant Families campaign lead by the National Immigrant Law Center and the Center for Law and Social Policy.

P.I.F Illinois is a coalition of advocates and social service providers in all sectors of human services organized to prepare for, resist, and protect immigrants from expected changes in federal rules about access to essential benefits.

P.I.F Illinois is working hard to organize a massive response to any federal rules that are published, to educate stakeholders on what this change would mean and how Illinois can fight back, and to work to prepare our state when this change becomes a reality.