Why Supporting Citizenship is Good for Business

Barbara Kamm is being honored as a Promoting Citizenship in the Workplace Champion of Change.

Many of us in Silicon Valley are working to help meet the predicted workforce needs of the next decade. This includes providing better, more efficient training and education in our community colleges and universities and creating opportunities for foreign-born workers who are legal, permanent residents and eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship.

San Francisco Bay Area businesses like Tech CU are creating partnerships with organizations such as the National Immigration Forum’s New American Workforce, which assist our customers and employees with information on citizenship.

There are approximately 536,000 immigrants in the Bay Area who meet are eligible to apply for citizenship. These individuals do everything from writing code to treating patients—and they can be part of the solution that addresses the evolving needs of U.S. companies.  Yet, many never take that final step towards citizenship, leaving critical benefits on the table, such as increased earnings, greater access to job opportunities, and the ability to petition for family members.

Working with local community legal service, companies like ours are hosting free citizenship seminars, where individuals receive legal assistance with their application for as little as $90. Some of the New American Workforce employer partners also host English-language training and civics courses.

Why are we so invested in our employees? It’s good for business. By providing access to citizenship guidance and legal services, we are ensuring a robust, diverse labor force dedicated to the mission of our company.

Encouraging our employees to attain citizenship strengthens the U.S. workforce and drives innovation within this country. This can lead to new developments in medicine, infrastructure, and agriculture, benefitting our economy, our country, and our world.

Barbara Kamm is President and CEO of Tech CU.

Citizenship in the Workplace

David Huerta is being honored as a Promoting Citizenship in the Workplace Champion of Change.

For centuries, this nation’s economy has been strengthened by the backbreaking work of immigrant laborers who built our infrastructure and put food on our tables. This immigrant legacy makes me proud to serve as President of SEIU United Service Workers West, a union comprising workers from all walks of life who are contributing to the prosperity of our great country.

Whether they are out in the streets demanding a living wage and decent benefits, or talking to their elected officials to stop wage theft or inappropriate police practices, immigrant workers in our union are paving the way to a better way of life for everyone in our communities. The goal is simple: provide better opportunities for our kids than what we had growing up.

We’re accomplishing that in a unique project called Building Skills Partnership, which brings together workers, employers and building owners to give immigrant workers a fair shot at career advancement and community engagement. The collaboration has allowed more than 1,000 immigrant workers to participate in English language classes, computer literacy programs, and other educational trainings.

Integrating new Americans into our communities has also been a priority. SEIU locals in California, including United Service Workers West, have partnered with Mi Familia Vota to assist over 5,400 Legal Permanent Residents with the citizenship process. Together, we’ve developed broad coalitions throughout California that have been instrumental in ensuring that California leads the way on legislation that respects and values the contributions of immigrants, such as enabling them to obtain drivers' licenses and to receive in-state tuition.

Looking back at these accomplishments, I’m truly honored to be named a “Champion of Change” for promoting citizenship in the workplace, but I think the true recognition belongs to the brave janitors and other immigrant workers across California who are working to make sure that our country builds on all of our strengths to prosper in the 21st century.

David Huerta is President of SEIU United Service Workers West.

Dedicating His Life So Others Could Live Their Own

Andrew Cray is being honored posthumously as an Affordable Care Act Champion of Change.

Andrew Cray dedicated his life to making sure others could live their own.  

Every day, Andrew fought tirelessly for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, Americans to be treated with dignity and fairness. His work touched so many lives in so many ways, from working to secure protections for LGBT homeless youth to collaborating with the Obama Administration to implement the Supreme Court’s marriage equality rulings. At the center of his work, however, was his belief that the foundation of equality rests on the ability of all Americans to access comprehensive, affordable, and inclusive health care.  

Andrew was just 28 years old when cancer tragically took his life this past August, but his passion for equity in and access to health insurance existed long before his diagnosis. As a transgender man, Andrew knew the challenges and the needs of the LGBT community personally and was all too familiar with the common occurrence of transgender people being denied insurance simply because of their gender identity, as well as with the startling statistics. According to a recent Center for American Progress report, one in three LGBT people with incomes at or below 4 times the federal poverty line lacked insurance, and 72% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people reported experiencing discrimination when attempting to find coverage through their employer for a same-sex partner. The eternal optimist that he was, Andrew believed that, with the right reforms and the improvements, those numbers could change.

Like many LGBT Americans, Andrew saw the Affordable Care Act as a vehicle for change and an opportunity to open up life-saving medical care to a community too often systemically and financially excluded. After passage, he worked with the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to end discrimination against LGBT people by health insurance companies. He collaborated with the federal government and state governments to ensure accurate data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity, which will serve as the foundation of future LGBT health advocacy. Andrew also worked with various partners to ensure that many of the new insurance options were inclusive of same-sex couples and transgender Americans.

As important as these reforms are, he also knew that, for the law to work, people needed to be educated and enrolled, which is why he, along with colleagues at the Center for American Progress, Sellers Dorsey, and the Federal Agencies Project, co-founded Out2Enroll. Over the last year, Out2Enroll has helped educate and connect countless LGBT Americans with their new coverage options under the Affordable Care Act. 

All of this work took on a new meaning for Andrew when, in September 2013, he was diagnosed with cancer. Throughout his treatment, he continued his legal advocacy and outreach work but also decided to utilize his personal story to convince young Americans, including young LGBT Americans, to enroll in health insurance. In an op-ed in The Advocate, Andrew wrote, “Our LGBT community is resilient and strong, and particularly for those of us who are young and have our entire lives in front of us, it may feel like we are invincible. I’ve learned the hard way that I’m not.”

Several months later, this past July, Andrew found out that his cancer had returned and that it was terminal. As his partner, and soon to be wife, I sat with Andrew as we discussed what he wanted to do with the time he had left. He said he wanted to continue his life’s work: fighting to ensure that all Americans, including LGBT Americans, can access life-saving medical care.

One month later, Andrew passed away far too quickly and far too young, but the benefits of his work live on. As he wrote in The Advocate last March, “Cancer has taken a lot from me physically and emotionally. But it hasn’t taken away my voice…I want to make sure other young LGBT people understand why getting covered is so important. I hope that my community will listen when I say — please, take care of yourselves. Be out, be healthy, and get covered."

Sarah McBride is the Special Assistant for LGBT Progress at the Center for American Progress and authored this blog post on behalf of Andrew Cray. Andrew Cray was a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. He was her husband and colleague.