Deferred Action Community-Based Research Project Chelsea McClellan, Amber Durkin, Leah Turner, Ryan Hamman Loyola University

Chicago Fall 2012

Introduction: In 1998, we started with one phone and one volunteer. Now we are a diverse team thats privileged to lead Chicago in immigration legal services, theater arts, and community development. (1) In their fourteen years since opening, Latinos Progresando has become a known community leader. Located in Little Village, the largest Mexican community in the Midwest, they have reached thousands of families each year. The staff and volunteers strive to provide low-cost legal services and enhance their community through leadership development programs and youth theater programs. They have been actively aware of the community issues and are strongly advocate those issues by providing information to residents and positively enhancing the community. Background: According to the 2010 Census, about 80,000 people live in Little Village (2). Of those 80,000 residents, over eighty percent are Latino (3), making these people the majority of Latinos Progresandos clients. A national issue that has become a main concern for the clients is the implementation of the Deferred Action policy. On June 15, 2012, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the policy for young people who entered the United States as children to be relieved from removal proceedings for a two year period. However, for those seeking to apply for Deferred Action, they must meet five criteria. The five requirements are: (1) the person must have come to the United States under the age of sixteen, (2) have continuously resided in the United States for a least five years preceding the date of this memorandum and are present in the United States on the date of this memorandum, (3) are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a general education development certificate, or are honorably discharged veterans of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States, (4)

have not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety, and (5) are not above the age of thirty (4). When this announcement was made there were many questions to be answered for those seeking this opportunity. People began to seek outside help to aid in the application process; however, there were businesses incorrectly filing the applications and essentially putting these people at a higher risk of deportation. With Latinos Progresando having the certification from the Board of Immigration Appeals, they are working to distribute accurate information about Deferred Action. Whether it be providing the service of filing the application correctly or simply providing an informational brochure about the policy, Latinos Progresando is committed to serving their clients to the best of their ability while keeping the communitys best interests in mind. Research Question: To decide on a research question for this project, our group worked in collaboration with Latinos Progresando to decide on an effective yet practical outcome. In view of the fact that Latinos Progresando has numerous ties to the Little Village and Pilsen communities, we decided that it would be beneficial to advocate the work of Latinos Progresando to similar communities, specifically Latino communities that would take advantage of Latinos Progresandos services. Latinos Progresando wants to know where there are Latinos in the Chicagoland area who will benefit from obtaining knowledge and potentially legal help concerning Deferred Action. We decided that we would seek to spread Deferred Action advocacy to Latino teenagers in high schools in the Chicago suburbs, because in order to be eligible for Deferred Action an applicant must be enrolled in school or have obtained a GED, and be at least 16 years old.

Data Collection: To collect our data, we first recognized that we needed to find a way to pin point where the largest populations of Latino communities are in the Chicagoland area. To gather this information we turned to demographic charts on the internet that listed suburban cities with high percentages of Latino populations. From this information, we decided to locate contact information from high schools in these areas with dense Latino populations. We used education.com as a tool to find high schools in these specific locations and from there we selected high schools that had significant percentages of Latino students. If a high school had a Latino population of 10% or higher we added the school to our list. We contacted guidance counselors and social workers employed by the high schools we found using an email template we created that could be easily modified for each specific institution. Next we decided to contact churches and community centers to reach a broader demographic who could benefit from Deferred Action. To find these community centers and churches we simply used Google maps to search for community centers and churches in highly populated Latino areas. An easy way of determining if a church was likely to have strong ties to Latino communities was by looking at their website. We tried to focus on contacting churches that had their website in Spanish, or that offered any sort of Latino programs. We contacted secretaries, program coordinators, and even pastors in churches. We sent all of our emails from the email account, legal@latinospro.org, which we thought sounded professional and trustworthy. To organize these institutions information we created an Excel sheet that listed the organizations name, address, phone number, specific contact, title of the contact, and email. All

of the contacts we sent emails to are listed on this Excel sheet, and is color-coordinated depending on if the email went through, if it did not, and if we got a response from that contact. Once organizations we contacted responded to our original email, we sent a second email containing further information provided to us by Latinos Progresando. We then informed contacts about our goal of creating a map on Latinos Progresandos website, and told them to inform us only if they did not want to be included on it. We waited two days for contacts to email us if they did not want to be listed, and after that we placed them on a new Excel sheet, called Definitive Contacts. From there, we used that sheet to begin building our map for Latinos Progresandos website. Data Analysis: As we received responses, replied to them, and began to place our definitive contacts onto our map, we identified several trends in our data. Looking at our final lists, we determined that we sent out emails to 101 high schools, twenty-one community centers, and twenty-five churches. From these emails, we received ten responses from high schools, only one response from a community center, and no responses from any churches. After completing our project, we received another email from a high school. However, this contact requested personal phone calls and meetings, so for the purposes of completing our project accurately and on time, we turned interacting with this contact over to Adrienne Lange, Director of Development and our main contact at Latinos Progresando. Because this last contact has not yet gone through the informative and opt-out processes, they are included in our final tally of responses (creating a total of eleven high school responses), but are neither included as a definitive contact nor placed on the map.

We experienced some difficulty with having emails fail, or addressing emails to invalid recipients, despite attaining these addresses from what we believed to be accurate sources. After sending all of the initial emails, we went back and examined how many failed to be delivered. We found that nine emails to high schools, two emails to community centers, and ten emails to our potential church contacts failed. Although we were able to successfully contact the overwhelming majority of those on our lists, the difficulties with contacting some potential resources may have played a role in our low response rate. We also had difficulties determining who to send our initial inquiries to, as not all schools, community centers, or churches had an obvious person to contact. As the data suggests, we experienced the most difficulty in this respect with contacting churches, as many only had listed the contact information of pastors or elders, and did not include any staff members with job titles relating to community outreach or coordination, which were some of our criteria when determining who to send emails to in high schools and community centers. This difficulty was clearly reflected by the email failure rate, as we discovered that ten out of twenty-five emails to churches were not delivered successfully. At the end of our project, we received a late response from a school district superintendent, who had been forwarded our initial outreach email by a staff member. Upon examining this email thread, we discovered that our outreach email had been filtered into the original recipients spam folder. This factor may also have played a role in our low response rate. For those who did respond to us, however, most contacts requested more general information about Deferred Action, but did not have specific questions. Several contacts indicated that they were already attempting to educate their communities about DACA, and in

some cases, were already in contact with other organizations and individuals to promulgate this effort. Some contacts brought to our attention the difficulties that they already faced, such as the fact that DACA and immigration statuses are sensitive issues, and can be difficult to address without violating individuals privacy. This concern helped us to reinforce the aim of our project: to provide those anxious about DACA with a list of trusted resources from which they can obtain reliable information in comfort and confidentiality. From the high school responses that we received, we noticed a slight majority of guidance and counselor positions, with six contacts belonging to the guidance department, three social workers, one Hispanic outreach coordinator, and one superintendent. This suggests that we may be able to obtain more responses in future outreach efforts by focusing on contacting staff and faculty members in the guidance departments. However, as this sample is rather small, we believe we should still contact individuals with the aforementioned titles, but perhaps in addition to, not instead of, guidance department members and counselors. Presentation of the Data: Figure 1: As we compiled our lists of resources during our initial research, we placed potential contact names into an initial Excel workbook, as displayed below.

The portions highlighted in yellow are the names of contacts whose emails went through successfully, as we encountered some difficulties with having emails fail. Contacts whose emails were invalid and therefore failed are highlighted in red (not shown). Contacts who we received responses from and who are included on the final map are highlighted in green, and those who we received responses from, but have not yet established a definitive relationship with, are highlighted in purple (not pictured). We formatted all of our Excel sheets in a uniform manner, as delegated by Amber after meeting with David Treering, Geographic Information Systems Specialist, and learning which formatting would be most conducive to placing information onto the interactive map. We sorted our contacts by community name, which we attained from our list of most Latino-populated areas in the city of Chicago. The Excel workbook is separated into three worksheets: one with contacts from high schools, one for community centers, and one for churches. Figure 2: After contacting all of our resources, receiving responses, sending follow-up emails, and waiting for opt-out requests, we compiled our final list of contacts into one new 8

Excel sheet, entitled Definitive Contacts. When constructing the map, Amber referred to this Excel spreadsheet exclusively, so as to eliminate the potential of including an incorrect contact and reduce the potential of entering inaccurate data.

This Excel sheet followed the same format as the initial list (refer to Figure 1), as that format was determined early on to be the most helpful for formatting the interactive map. The one exception to this format is the last contact on the list, which was referred to us by another contact from the Youth Services of Glenview, the only community center which we received a response from. This contact is unavailable until January, as denoted in the last column on the right side of the spreadsheet. The last contact to respond to us, a high school superintendent, is not listed, as their response was received so late that we turned managing this relationship entirely over to Adrienne. Figures 3 and 4: To further illustrate the locations and job titles of the contacts we received responses from, we created two pie charts to visually represent our data. Figure 3 below represents the different job titles from our Definitive Contacts list, which may prove helpful in 9

conducting further outreach efforts.

Contact Job Titles

Executive Director, 1 Latino Outreach Coordinator, 1

Guidance Department, 6 Social Worker, 3

Figure 4, shown below, represents the geographic location of all definitive contacts. Those listed in the Chicago area are all high schools whose address is included within the city limits. All others, while still in the greater Chicago area, are considered to be suburbs. Their points, relative to one another as well as the rest of the city, can be better viewed on the map itself, shown later in Figure 5.

Contact Locations
Glenview, 1 Wheeling, 1

Addison , 1

Chicago, 6

West Chicago, 1

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Figure 5: The final step in our project was to place all of our contacts and their information on a map, which could be later embedded on the Latinos Progresando website. When a user clicks on one of the points, a dialogue box appears with the schools name, address, phone number, contact name, and link to email the contact, as shown below.

Results/Findings: At the end of our project, we researched, located, and obtained contact information for 147 potential resources. We sent emails to each one of these contacts, and received only twelve responses. We encountered issues with emails failing, with nine emails issued to high schools, two to community centers, and ten to churches being returned to us automatically by the Mailer Daemon. The only responses we received were from interested contacts, and we did not receive any follow-up opt-out emails. One of our twelve responses was from a community center, while the other eleven were all from high schools. The community organization to contact us referred us to another person within the organization, but was said to be unavailable until the first week in January. We included this resource on the Definite Contacts list, with a note to contact them in 11

the future, but did not include them on the map. The last high school to contact us is included in our final count of responses, but neither included on the Definitive Contacts list nor the map. Additionally, two of our eleven contacts from high schools were located in the same school. Because of this, only one point for this school has been placed on the map, creating a grand total of nine points. As we began to construct the map itself and plot the points, we noticed that most of our contacts were located in schools in the North/Northwest region of the city. This was an interesting point to notice, as we anticipated most of our responses to come from more heavily Latino populated areas of the city, mainly from the South/Southwest sides, and had even focused on contacting more potential resources in these areas. However, only two of our definitive contacts included on the map were located on the south sides of the city, and only one on the west side. Most of our contacts were either social workers or guidance counselors in their respective high schools, and the contact referred to us by the community center was the organizations Executive Director. The last high school to contact us was the districts superintendent, who was forwarded our initial outreach email by one of his high school principals. This indicates that in further outreach, we may experience more success by contacting more guidance counselors in schools and directors in community centers. However, because we failed to receive any responses from churches and had such a small sample size, we are unable to conclude whether our low response rate was from failure to contact the correct staff member, our emails being filtered into spam folders, a lack of interest, or a lack of capacity to view, read, or respond to emails, as well as the capacity to become involved in our project.

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Implications: The data that we worked with throughout this project was such a small sample that it is difficult to draw any substantial conclusions from it. However, the data that we do have to work with offers some potential explanations for the successes and the downfalls of our research. First of all, there is the matter of patterns of response and their respective locations. Those who responded were located in areas that, according to US Census data, were relatively high in Latino populations. Most responses came from Northern Chicago areas though, and there was underrepresentation from areas in the South and West especially areas like Cicero, which has a primarily Latino population. The response we got was a start; however, we are still missing representation from numerous areas with substantial Latino populations. Some implications can be derived from these patterns, though none can be directly supported through the data since it is such a small sample size. One possible downfall could have been using the incorrect research method for the situation at hand. Email may not have been an effective outreach approach in these unrepresented areas. Another possibility may have been availability of time and resources in the unresponsive areas. There is a lot that counselors and social workers have on their plates already and they may not have the ability to take on more responsibilities, especially in the middle of the school year. Another possibility could be that they already have some form of Deferred Action information in these areas since there are such a large number of Latino residents. In this case these schools may be simply disinterested in the network. A final reason to consider would be the forwarding of our emails to spam folders. We found this to be the case with one of the contacts that we corresponded with. These are just a few possible implications of the data based on location and response. Location is only one part of the picture that the data presents. Another key element to consider is patterns of response based on organization type. Responses from schools were the highest out of the three categories of organizations (schools, churches, and community centers). We only received eleven responses out of roughly 100 emails sent to schools, which was better than no response, but still only a

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minute representation of the greater Chicagoland area. We reached out to a plethora of churches and community centers throughout the Chicago area as well; however, the only feedback we received was from one community center that was unavailable as a resource until the New Year due to a large number of current obligations. This lack of response begs for a reevaluation of our research methods. The data reflective of organization type and their response rates suggests that we need to alter outreach methods, especially for churches and community centers. Email may not have been the best avenue for these places due to the nature of the organizations. We derived contacts from websites some of which were outdated or inaccurate. Several of the churches that we contacted with email had come back to us with non-working email addresses or automatic responses. Even when the email addresses were in service, there were still only a limited number of people within the organization with email addresses listed. Therefore it may be true that we were not getting through to the appropriate contact. For churches we mainly contacted pastors, as they most commonly had their information listed. Since we did not get responses from any of them, it is logical to conclude that this was the wrong person to contact for our purposes. Community center websites have similar problems. It is hard to locate the email address of a contact, let alone be sure if we are contacting the correct person. In these cases a phone call would be the next step in follow up. Schools did not come back with excellent response rates either, though we did receive some sort of feedback from a small number of them. The data suggests (though not verifiably) that we started off with a decent method, as we did get some responses from our outreach. However, for those who did not respond, a phone call could be a more appropriate follow up. This would allow us to inquire about low response rates as well as offer schools direct information regarding DACA information and other resources. It seems as if we were contacting the correct persons within the school though. From the responses we received there was a mixture of guidance counselors, social workers, and guidance chairs. This suggests that this is an appropriate area to contact for future inquisitions with other schools. It seems like there was a slight trend in guidance departments being the main responders to our outreach, but the

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sample size is too small to show if this is a legitimate trend or not. To air on the side of caution, future inquisitions should be directed equally to social workers and guidance counselors. With further research the data has the potential to not only confirm or deny some of the implications listed above, but also to offer new suggestions altogether. Suggestions for Further Research: Suggestions for further research have been laced throughout previous sections, but to be more explicit, the main suggestion for further research would be to contact the organizations that did not respond using an alternative method. Rather than using email, a phone call may be more effective. By following up with those who did not respond, we could determine whether they were simply not interested, if they misunderstood our purposes, or if they were just unaware of the services Latinos Progresando was offering. Additionally, instead of focusing on social work or guidance singularly, we can focus on both of them without trying to favor one over the other. Reworking the emails we initially send to potential resources could be an option as well. Instead of sending them up front though, they could be an effective follow up tool after phone conversations in order to provide more information to back up our claims. In our phone conversations or email correspondence it may also be beneficial to ask for referrals this would help us to enhance our search. One area we did not dig into was community colleges. These types of institutions often act as community centers for local residents in addition to housing a large number of people who may be eligible for Deferred Action. Time constraints on our research did not allow us to explore this area, which could prove to be fruitful in further research. It should be reiterated that the sample size of our data is too small to draw any substantial conclusions, however, further research could bring in more data and help to solidify some of our suggested trends. Conclusion:

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It is difficult to draw definite conclusions from the research conducted in this project, as it is still in its early stages. We have identified some interested contacts though, that are willing and eager to provide their students and community members with information regarding Deferred Action. The goal of our research was to locate these potential community resources, and we did. What we ended up with was a manageable response to turn over to LP in addition to our suggestions for further research. We have put some gears in motion to achieve this goal on a larger scale in the future. There is a wealth of potential Deferred Action candidates in the Chicagoland area, especially with its growing Latino Population. Latinos Progresando has served large numbers of people looking for information regarding Deferred Action, so the need for information is solidly demonstrated. We have located many potential sources for points of information dispersion in high schools, community centers, and churches. Now, in order to fully utilize these resources it is essential to reevaluate our research methods in order to elicit a greater response. The response we have received has shown that even though this is a sensitive subject to deal with, there is a desire for information- especially in areas with significant Latino populations. With further outreach to these areas there is a potential to build the resource network into a viable community resource for people throughout Chicago and the surrounding areas. Finally, further data collection can help to establish trends with some supporting information. This information can continue to help Latinos Progresando strengthen their relationship with the Latino immigrant community and to reach out to many new areas.

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Works Cited (1) "Our Story." Latinos Progresando Our Story Comments. Latinos Progresando, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://latinospro.org/our-story/>. (2) Rodriguez, Michael D. "Little Village." Enlace Chicago, 28 Mar. 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ilga.gov/senate/Committees/Redistricting/EnlanceChicago.pdf>. (3)"Little Village (South Lawndale)." About the Community. LISC Chicago's New Communities Program, n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.newcommunities.org/communities/littlevillage/about.asp>. (4) "Homeland Security." Deferred Action. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. <http://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action>.

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