Dubuque’s daily newspaper wrote about the research I undertook with three other MIT grad students to document the challenges facing immigrants in the region.
The story is behind a paywall so I’ll share some thoughts here.
For context: our team planned to spend 12 days doing research in Dubuque in March, but the spread of COVID led us to cancel travel plans a few days before our flights left and research remotely.
It quickly became clear that Dubuque was entering a different reality with COVID; the unemployment rate jumped from around 3% to 12% within a few weeks & uncertainty about the virus was high. We decided to refocus our project on how COVID was affecting immigrant communities.
Thanks to our partners at the Community Foundation for Greater Dubuque, we spoke via Zoom & phone with 29 immigrants, officials, advocates, and volunteers in the region, and surveyed several dozen local businesses in March and early April.
The people we spoke with affirmed a profound reality: Dubuque's Mexican, Guatemalan, Marshallese, & other immigrant residents already faced barriers that white Dubuquers didn't, and COVID was exacerbating these divides.
Many Guatemalan residents, caught up in a broken asylum system, took informal jobs in restaurants to support themselves while waiting to receive legal work authorization. Those jobs were the first ones to go.
The Marshallese community, suffering from incredibly high rates of diabetes (rooted in America's nuclear tests in their home islands after WWII) & lacking consistent access to health care, was especially vulnerable to the virus.
Mexican residents felt discomfort speaking Spanish in public & feared that they or family members would be deported. ICE raided the nearby town of Postville a few years ago, and we heard that a local cop followed someone home after a public event and reported their address to ICE.
Many immigrants weren't citizens, meaning that they didn't have access to the federal stimulus check, unemployment benefits, and other lifelines.
Meanwhile, the services that immigrants relied on – volunteers driving them to medical appointments & immigration court, English classes, pro bono legal advice – could no longer be done in person. Most immigrants we spoke with didn't have a broadband connection at home.
Our research tried to lift up these fears and barriers to help the Community Foundation for Greater Dubuque and its partners better understand how to respond.
We recommended creating an immigrant info center to coordinate existing services; setting a goal of universal broadband subscription across the region; hiring ‘community connectors’ to help immigrants find jobs; and pushing white Dubuquers to be more accepting of their neighbors.
We also created documents to help the Foundation & others better serve immigrants:
- A “how-to” guide w/ best practices for hiring immigrants
- A “bold leadership” toolkit to help white Dubuquers become better allies
- And fictionalized stories of immigrants to build understanding
It was a sobering experience to learn about these challenges, even through remote research, and I’m grateful to everyone we spoke with for sharing their time and expertise.
Here’s my takeaway from this research: Our immigration policies, social safety net, medical system, and approach to policing have cruelty built into them. They are failing millions of Americans. It’s on all of us to push for fundamental changes & build an equitable future.
Our full report, executive summary, and related documents can be seen here.
nathanarnosti.com 