IRIS Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem (right), with Sanctuary Kitchen directors Aminah Alsaleh and Rawaa Ghazi. Wilbur Cross High School IRIS summer intern Husna Hakimi (center) with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and State Sen. Marty Looney. Our nation’s semiquincentennial arrived a day early at IRIS on Friday, with fireworks of a very sparkling and high-flying verbal variety. They included declarations and inspiring testimonials about the self-evident, inseparable, and glorious relationship between democracy, our immigrant diversity, and civic engagement over the last 250 years of America. With an impressive human-size Lady Liberty at the front door and Integrated Refugee Immigrant Services (IRIS) staff proudly wearing their black-and-white “Immigrants Welcome since 1776” t-shirts, more than 200 gathered — clients, friends, and supporters of our area’s premier refugee and immigrant resettlement agency — at the group’s New Haven headquarters at 323 Temple St. Amid the food, the arts and crafts fair, and the fun atmosphere, one theme circulated: Celebrate America’s achievement and state and re-state the obvious yet critical and indispensable American mantra: We are all immigrants! Yet as that self-evident truth is perhaps the main one that is being policy-ed into denial by the Trump administration, the gathering also functioned as a kind of important pep rally for the organization and its many friends and supporters. “Every day there’s a new pain point,” said Maggie Mitchell Salem, the executive director of IRIS, which, under the Trump administration, has lost $2 million in federal funding and counting, among other onslaughts. In the wake of unrelenting Trump administration pressure to de-naturalize people and go after people who already have status, the organization is bracing for a line of people to be at its door. “I worry about our legal and case management staff,” said Salem. “It’s only half the size it was since I came and now over a million people who have status are having that ripped away.” Salem is passionate about her organization and its board voting — clearly to their funding peril — simply not to cooperate with the Trump administration whose policies, says Salem, are a contradiction of the meaning of the word “refugee” in the enabling federal legislation passed during the Carter administration and blessed by the Reagan administration. Click here for a story about IRIS’s work at the March No Kings Rally, recording immigrant voices and stories to prepare for the July 3 event “A humane administration would see the earthquake in Venezuela, and reinstate TPS [Temporary Protective Status],” which has recently been taken away from Venezuelans, and also from Haitians and Syrians. “We have a whole government approach now to reduce immigrants’ rights, and that’s crazy,” she added. The good news on that front was that Salem announced a $10,000 challenge grant — in the hope that will spur another $25,000 in giving — specifically to beef up the group’s legal services, which gift comes from long-time supporter and all-around area philanthropist Lindy Lee Gold. “I know of women,” said Gold, “who have a hearing, but say ‘I’m not going,’ out of fear of being picked up or an incident.” IRIS’s legal services helps to encourage the going not only by helping to gather the appropriate papers but also by providing an escort, a testifier, to be there and to record an incident if it occurs, said Gold. So the IRIS 250 party on Friday was very much an organizing, service-providing event as well, with tables prominently staffed by reps from IRIS’s partners: The League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union. As you entered past Lady Liberty, another young woman, Nallely Acosta, the group’s senior legal operations coordinator, was sitting at one of the IRIS tables assembling items for the group’s “Purple Folder” program. That is, a folder that IRIS is using to help clients, old and the many new they expect, to have all their documents in hand, organized, ready-to-go should they be confronted with new legal challenges. The folders include a sheet for a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. That’s because, Acosta explained, many people who achieved their green card or other legal status and did so years ago often had few documents or no longer have documents they once had in their possession. Yet absolutely, in the current atmosphere, everyone must be prepared to dig them out, from whatever source. The festive gathering also included headliners U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, and retiring New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Marty Looney, among others, who spoke about their respective families’ immigrant and refugee stories. As he’s retiring after being the longest-serving president of the state Senate, Looney was honored with an award for his lifetime of support of immigrant rights — legislation enabling immigrant drivers’ license, letting Dreamers avail themselves of grants for the state’s colleges — and the values of liberty, and inclusion. Friday’s speakers spoke from the heart about their own immigrant origins as templates of the historical American embrace of the newcomer, a template that younger attendees at the event might be fueled by. Among those present and hearing — while also serving at the very busy Sanctuary Kitchen tables — were some of IRIS’s ongoing success stories like Rawaa Ghazi, originally from Iraq, and Aminah Alsaleh, from Syria. Ghazi, a chemistry student in Iraq, and Alsaleh, who had ceased having educational opportunities in Syria after sixth grade or so, both arrived at IRIS’s door speaking, to use Aminah’s phrase, “zero English.” Through IRIS’s services they learned the language and took career, citizenship training, and business courses. They probably both can explain our bicameral system better than most native-born Americans (a joke going around the rooms, festooned with examples of citizenship-exam questions), and they are now both fairly fluent in English. Together they both run Sanctuary Kitchen, a separate nonprofit, which continues to train arriving immigrants. Rawa is the operations director and Aminah is the culinary director. And they are both U.S. citizens And yet. “We’re both citizens,” said Aminah, “but we are not secure.” Because they wear the hijab, they said, they feel in recent years that it “separates” them. And there’s more. “We came to America because we heard about free speech, but now we’re worried,” said Aminah. Worried about speaking freely. “We were proud and showed our i.d., but now don’t feel safe doing it.” The change in atmosphere also very much affects how they operate at Sanctuary Kitchen, Rawaa added. With people from so many countries participating — there are chefs and chefs-in-training from Syria, Iraq, Senegal, Nepal, Afghanistan, among others — the lingua franca of the place, they said, was simply the language of food. That is, everybody was welcome without asking lots of questions. That’s no longer so. “Maybe someone from the government” will be coming by, she said. They just put up Ring safety cameras, she added, at the kitchen’s Legion Avenue location. Inspiration also flowed two ways as the afternoon and speeches played on. “Being here gives me hope and inspiration,” Blumenthal said. “What IRIS has done makes me proud to be an American. But be prepared to fight. ICE isn’t going to go away.” The senator’s lists of battles to come includes, he said, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s nomination of former Oklahoma state trooper and U.S. Marine Lance Schroyer to head ICE’s deportation and enforcement operations. “His principal qualification is that he headed Mullin’s security detail in Oklahoma,” said Blumenthal, and he intends to fight the nomination, which requires Senate approval. “Without immigrants, there is no July 4,” said Tong. “There is no America 250. We often say we’re the sons of immigrants, but we don’t say as much that we’re immigrants and refugees who ran for their lives.” Taking up Tong’s theme, “This country,” said Looney, “in many ways was built on the injustices in foreign countries — Ireland, Germany. The terror inflicted on people by their own government is key to how we’ve become who we are.” And Mayor Justin Elicker urged New Haveners who might feel a little depressed on this July 4th, or a little angry, or paralyzed by how Trump can at times seem to have appropriated the flag, and not want to participate in the celebration, to not give in to such impulses. “Who we are as a nation is not about what Donald Trump is trying to say.” And now back to Blumenthal, who said, “Democracy is on the line. And I want to leave you with one four-letter word: VOTE!” Mitchell Salem and IRIS have the last word: “Our democracy is founded for what IRIS does, so on this day we have to celebrate ‘We the people. . .’ That phrase, ‘We the people . . . ,’ has no asterisks, no carve-outs.” Those wanting to contribute to the new legal fund initiative or to get involved in any of IRIS’s programs, here’s the link and the contact info. State Attorney General William Tong: “Without immigrants, there is no July 4.” The post “‘We The People’ Has No Asterisks, No Carve-Outs” appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less