Dear John, 

In this week’s newsletter:

• Congress Restores Benefits Eligibility for COFA Citizens
• New Summer Meals Program for Rural Kids
• Statistical Overview of Immigrants in the US
• Several PIF Members Selected to Receive MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving Funding

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024, signed into law by President Biden on March 9, 2024, added Compacts of Free Association (COFA) citizens living in the U.S. to the list of noncitizens eligible to receive federal public benefits. Congress also waived the five-year bar so eligible COFA citizens can apply for federal benefits as soon as they enter the U.S. Thank you and congratulations to all our partners who worked on this. For more information, read the press statement from PIF Steering Committee member AAPCHO.

PIF partner Share Our Strength and their No Kid Hungry campaign is launching a lineup of webinars about a great new federal food program with a complicated name: Non-Congregate Summer Meals. The program opens new opportunities to get nutritious summer meals to rural kids – including children in immigrant families. In addition to field-tested ideas for promoting the program in your community, webinars will also cover the policy basics and opportunities for nonprofits to sponsor local meal sites. Check out the links below and stay tuned for more webinars in April:

• March 21st - Schools Bringing Summer Meals to Kids: Lessons Learned & Promising Practices from Non-Congregate Feeding in 2023
• March 26th - How Community-Based Organizations are Expanding Access to Summer Meals through Non-Congregate Feeding

More Information on the No Kid Hungry Site

There are 28 million people who are immigrants working in the United States. Though income for immigrant households is slightly higher than that of US-born households, immigrants are also more likely to live in poverty. The uninsured rate for immigrants is more than double that of their US-born neighbors, and immigrants are less likely to have public health insurance coverage. These and many other data points relevant to our work are summarized in Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States, a brief recently updated by our partners at the Migration Policy Institute. This great go-to resource for national snapshots also includes links to MPI’s state-specific data overviews.

Read on the MPI Site

Congratulations to several PIF Partners who received significant awards through MacKenzie Scott’s “Yield Giving Open Call” funding opportunity! Juan Constantino, Executive Director of one funded PIF member, La Casa de Amistad, based in South Bend, Indiana explained in a statement, "This $2,000,000 unrestricted grant is the highest award in our organization's history. It will be transformational in the way we are able to plan for the future and adapt to the needs of our growing Latino and immigrant populations in South Bend." PIF applauds the historic investment in immigrant-led and immigrant-serving organizations across the country and celebrates the increased capacity and resources in immigrant communities across the country.

Visit our website at www.pifcoalition.org

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