This Week at LIRS

Welcome to This Week at LIRS!

Every week, we catch you up on what's new at LIRS—from upcoming events to media appearances, important immigration updates, and more.

"Decades of disinvestment in immigration infrastructure, inconsistent government policies fluctuating between treating immigration as a criminal or humanitarian issue, and limited appetite to address the root causes of migration abroad, have all led us to this paroxysmal point. The truth is that our asylum system and infrastructure is fundamentally broken."

This week, LIRS President and CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah published a video op-ed about solutions to the unaccompanied children emergency with NowThis. Check it out!

Watch and Share

Join LIRS’s long legacy of providing protection and welcome to unaccompanied migrant children at the border and beyond. Our Hope at the Southern Border toolkit outlines tangible ways for you, your friends and family, and your community to lend a hand at this critical time.

Download the toolkit.

"[LIRS] is focused now on building its capacity to continue offering 'small, family-centric' care, [Vignarajah] said. On a webinar Wednesday, LIRS asked for prayer, donations and volunteers to offer foster care and advocates to call on the Biden administration and Congress to take action, among other things."

Many thanks to Religion News Service for calling attention to our request for action.

Read the article.

EMMAUS: Congregational Discernment is a new resource for congregations that are interested in learning more about the work of LIRS and find themselves asking, “How can we help?”

Through the three sessions of the Discernment Guide, faith communities will meet to pray, discuss, and discern how they are called to join in the work of welcome.

Begin the discernment process.

TAKE ACTION! Join LIRS in advocating for fair, humane immigration policy for our refugee and immigrant neighbors. Visit our Advocacy page to learn how to easily contact your Congressperson today in support of the US Citizenship Act of 2021.

Visit the action center.

Coming Up

Join LIRS on May 23 at 4 p.m. ET for our first annual Stand Up, Speak Up Spring Vigil. Together with hundreds of interfaith communities across the country, we will examine our roles as compassionate friends and justice-seekers through prayer, reflection, and stories from migrant and refugee families.

Register today.

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