Dear John, 

In this week’s newsletter:

• Data-Informed Advocacy
• Partner Highlight: NC Field
• Have you signed on? LIFT the BAR Act Letter

Our friends at Community Science are sponsoring a webinar TODAY, Wednesday, November 15, at 2:00 pm ET on how data can inform our understanding of structural challenges to health and well-being for all. PIF Deputy Director Cheasty Anderson will present on how our coalition uses data to inform advocacy efforts, and KFF will share insights from their survey of immigrants, which drove a series of Los Angeles Times articles.

Register for the Webinar

PIF has recently collaborated with active member NC Field to bring the voices of their community into PIF’s planning for the future. North Carolina Focus on Increasing Education, Leadership & Dignity, or NC FIELD, was founded in 2009, and has created a model for training farmworkers and farmworker youth to have a voice in the debates about issues that directly impact their lives and their families’ livelihoods.  

NC FIELD’s core programs include capacity building; health access and equity programs; food distribution as an NC Food Bank partner; popular education projects that empower farmworkers to resist dangerous heat, pay-gouging, and criminal behaviors of labor contractors; and opportunities to learn how to utilize their agricultural knowledge base to generate income. 

“PIF's support is crucial for the communities NC FIELD belongs to, and serves. This relationship expands our capacity to give voice to thousands of workers and their families as they struggle to feed us all. We believe our partnership with PIF is essential in bringing attention and resources to issues like the accessibility of life saving resources like healthy food, medicine, health care, climate change mitigation, and housing. We depend upon PIF to elevate the issues of migrant and seasonal farmworker families, who desperately need our collective power to ensure equitable access to the assets necessary to live happy, healthy lives,” said Yesenia Cuello, Executive Director of NC Field.

PIF is proud to partner with NC Field as they address the structural injustice that harms immigrant farmworkers. Recently, NC Field has shared a film that highlights food insecurity among those who are essential to grow food for us all. 

Watch and Share their Moving Call for Change

Earlier this year, PIF launched a sign on letter for national, state and local organizations to show their support for the LIFT the BAR Act (HR. 4170/S. 2038). Hundreds of organizations joined us and signed the letter. We continue to accept sign ons on a rolling basis. 

Has your organization already signed the letter? Check out the current list of organizational signatories. Sign on if you haven’t already! We urge all PIF members to be on this letter. 

As a reminder, the LIFT the BAR Act would:

• Restore access to federal public benefits for lawfully present immigrants, including people with Lawful Permanent Resident status (green card holders), Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, special immigrant juveniles, and other federally authorized non-citizens residing in the United States;
• Eliminate the five-year bar for Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, TANF, and SSI; 
• Remove arbitrary barriers by ensuring that immigrants with sponsors have access to services based on the income and resources that are actually available to them;
• Remove state authority to impose additional restrictions on immigrants who qualify for benefits; and
• Restore flexibility for states and localities to provide benefits to immigrants with their own funds.

A wide range of resources and backgrounders on the LIFT the BAR Act are available on our 5-Year Bar Resource page.  

Has Your Organization Signed On?

Visit our website at www.pifcoalition.org

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.