 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, a webcast, whatever you want to call us. We're online and we're live every Wednesday morning. The show is free to anyone to watch both our live shows, which we do here 10 a.m. on Wednesday mornings and all the recordings. We have the recordings of all of our previous shows. We post them up to YouTube and have the links from our Encompass Live website so you can access them all from there if you want to. These sessions are a mixture of things. Presentations, book reviews, mini-training sessions, basically anything library related we are happy to have on the show. We do a we also we have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations and we bring in a guest speaker sometimes and that is what we have this morning. As you can see from the first slide here on the line we have with us Kathy Liddell who's from Northlake Public Library District up in Illinois. Hello Kathy. Hi. Good morning and she's been doing some work recently with immigrants, non-native speakers and helping them out with their legal info needs and so she's going to talk to us about what they've been doing up there in Northlake to help the mountains. Give us some tips and things as for what we can do in our libraries. So I'll go ahead and take it away Kathy. Okay. Good morning everyone. I first wanted to start out with a presentation telling you a little bit about myself and my job at Northlake and then describing the community of Northlake and then going into the three different local legal programs that I did at our library. One was the deferred action for children arrivals and the Illinois temporary driver's license and citizenship. So before I became a librarian I worked in non-profit organizations for 10 years before returning to graduate school and during that time I worked extensively with Spanish speakers. I worked in a family planning clinic. I worked with farm workers as an AmeriCorps volunteer. I worked also with child development home visiting and then so when I decided to go back I received masters in library science and in Latin American studies. So I have two master's degrees from Indiana University and I've been working at Northlake library for almost seven years. Oops it's not clicking through. There we go. So a little bit about our district. We're located west of downtown Chicago about 17 miles. Our district includes the city of Northlake, the village of Stone Park and unincorporated Liden Township which when I came to this position it's always strange to have unincorporated areas in a metropolitan area. And our service population is probably like 26,000 and a third of our service population was born in Mexico and between 15-60% of our patrons speak Spanish at home. So the legal programming kind of came about for me my job. I work mostly I should probably say a little bit more about what I do. I'm the outreach librarian and I also manage the Spanish collection. I'm also responsible for teaching computer classes but also doing also different other types of programming. So I really thought as a patron concern about legal you know the need for information about immigration issues. So and the laws in the state of Illinois were changing as well as the ones nationwide. And even though we're very close to Chicago we really don't have tons of non-profits that deal with those immigration and other social service issues. It's pretty much Northlake and then the city. When we refer people to organizations for different needs it's pretty much they have to go to the Chicago. So and then finally I really got the idea started thinking about it when there was a large like event at Navy Pier. It was a DACA so it's the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals event in August of 2012. Soon after the Obama administration announced it the deferred action. So I'm gonna go to first talk a little bit about deferred action. So it was announced by Janet Napolitano and it really helped people who stopped the deportation of undocumented youth. People who were brought here as children. So it's basically to stop the deportation of young people. And as many as you know 24,000 in Illinois had applied but there was still between 70 and 75,000 still qualified and this is probably 2012-2013 numbers. So basically requirements where they for DACA are to they have they need to have come to the US before the age of 16 and that they were present in the US you know on the date that the law was passed in June 15th of 2012 and that they were continuously resided in the US for five years. Another requirement was that they were currently in school they you know graduated from high school were working on a GED or were honorably discharged from the Armed Forces or the Coast Guard. So the requirements also included obviously not being convicted of a crime or that they were a threat to national or public security. They weren't above the age of 30 that also required a $475 application fee. And this policy is temporary and it needs to be renewed every two years. So actually there is I notice locally that they have DACA renewal workshops that have been I've noticed some in the city so that's something that I'm definitely going to consider doing or possibly do on just another full-fledged DACA workshop at our library. So the people I contacted were the National Immigration Justice Center and they're basically you know legal services and advocacy for asylum seekers and refugees and immigrants. And they typically don't come to libraries they usually just go to law firms and and have an event at a large law firm and then they pair up people who are interested and they sign up online with their organization. So this was kind of something new for them but I was persistent because it's something that I really wanted to have available at the library. So I started in September when I first contacted them and I didn't finalize the date until December 6th and I emailed the woman frequently and I you know it took a bit of time to convince her because sometimes for nonprofit organizations in the city 17 miles is kind of too far for them to go. So the workshop itself the National Immigration Center provided all the things necessary to apply so that included the forms. They also offered what they went question by question instruction on the forms. There was a lot of questions obviously about eligibility. You know they also gave guidance on what kind of evidence they would have to present and then they would explain the the next step in the process. Sorry. Participants were welcome to submit applications themselves. So technically I mean anyone could I guess fill out the application for DACA and submit it. And then this organization would review if they wanted to was optional review their application for a hundred dollars. But that's not something that they were pushing at the at the workshop. The workshop was free to everyone that participated you know all the participants. It was just an option for them. And there's a lot there's I mean I think with legal issues there's always a possibility of scams. There's no lawyers in Chicago that were kind of capitalizing on the deferred action and charging anywhere from five hundred to five thousand dollars for their services for filling out the application. So I was really grateful that we were able to offer this service to our patrons for free. So I advertised this workshop both on NIJC and Northlake websites. So the organization that actually put on the workshop they advertised on their website. And then as well as you know Facebook excuse me Facebook links to registration because NIJC were the people that actually had created the online registration because our library does not have that. I mean at the time it didn't we do now. So we created links and you know I was talking with parents with school-aged children. Our local junior college I also contacted them Triton College and also excuse me the local Catholic church that's just on the block from the library. So at the workshop there was a certain amount of documentation of their presence in the U.S. that they needed to kind of be able to provide just to have it available and collected. One so the requirement was obviously their age and their identity and their presence in the U.S. for five years and before they were 16 years of age. So obviously age and identity would be with any kind of you know state ID that they would have but so but in terms of creating evidence for their presence in the U.S. it would be through school transcripts or report cards immunization records those types of things. So some of the benefits obviously of deferred action it made it people eligible to work legally work in the U.S. the time that they spent in because it is a conditional resident status would count towards residency requirements for naturalization and they're able to partake in the same activities as a legal resident except for they wouldn't qualify for things like a POW grant or they couldn't travel extensively outside the U.S. There's also some drawbacks to DACA the information that's gathered during that application could be used you know against some of the applicants if for some reason it revealed that there was a fraud or criminal offense or a threat to national public security. There's a certain I think in general with the popular art our patrons were immigrants mistrust of the government and so the kind of the mistrust of DACA if individuals or families were you know deported because of the information that the applicant supplied for their application. There's also kind of the the the issue of employers you know providing evidence of someone's present in the U.S. and that being kind of a self-incriminating that they would self-incriminate themselves so they somehow be punished for having a worker that was undocumented. Okay so the next the next program that I that I had was the Illinois temporary driver's license program so the state of Illinois passed a law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain a temporary driver's license and so this is kind of Illinois was the tenth state to actually enact something like this you know the other states include New Mexico and Washington and Colorado, Maryland as well as the Washington DC. So the state of Illinois has since 2005 issued licenses for foreign students or long-term visitors so it's something that's not really new to the state of Illinois. Okay so this law was passed in January of 2013 and the state began accepting applications in November of 2013. So in the state of Illinois as many as a half a million people qualified for the temporary driver's license. So the temporary driver's license itself is very different from a permanent license in terms of color and it clearly states that it's not valid for identification. So the Illinois Coalition for Immigrants and Refugee Rights excuse me was the organization that I worked with for this workshop. They're based in Chicago and so they they are really very large nonprofit organization that works with a lot of different campaigns. They do dream relief, a new American citizenship program project just to name a few and they were the people that hosted the DACA event at Navy Pier in Chicago where 13,000 people showed up to apply for deferred action. Not all of them obviously got through because it was an all-day event but they're one of the probably the largest nonprofit organization that deals with refugees and immigrants. Okay so I contacted Jesse Hoyt at ICIR. So they did a one-hour presentation on the requirements of the temporary driver's license. So I did similar type of outreach as I did for the DACA workshop. I did outreach through Facebook, our websites, flyers in the library. If people you know if I felt comfortable enough if people would ask you know reference questions that's part of my job at the library I would ask them if they knew of somebody or if they were interested in information on it. And so there was no registration because it was more of a lecture style workshop. DACA it was important to have people register so they knew how many materials that they were supposed to bring in if they have sufficient sufficient staff. But for this anyone you know could come it was just a matter of me advertising it. Okay so there's certain required documentation for the temporary driver's license name and date of birth. You know their current address, their written signature, and proof of one year of residence in Illinois. It could be a rental agreement, it could be one example. So for the Illinois temporary driver's license it was required that they pass all the vision and road and written tests. Also it was necessary at the time that they had their appointment to show proof of a car car insurance and to pay a fee of $30 for the license. And so you'll see in this slide to the left there's a standard driver's license for Illinois. And then to the right is the temporary driver's license that are issued to people who are undocumented. You'll notice it says not valid for identification and so the colors are different as well as showing that it's not valid for identification. If for some reason someone was stopped and they have a temporary driver's license in the state of Illinois and they do not have car insurance, their license is immediately revoked. So some of the benefits of the temporary driver's licenses, people are able to drive without constant fear of being pulled over. We had someone, we had a journalist from the Pioneer Press which is a local conglomerate newspaper of suburban Chicago and talked to people who had attended the workshop and that was one kind of definite feedback that he got was that they don't have to constantly be afraid of being pulled over. And it saves law enforcement, jail space and time of enforcement. People are educated on the driving laws of Illinois. We provide for our patrons rules of the road in Spanish and I think we also have it in Polish also as well as English. And the benefit is also the car insurance requirements. In a perfect world everyone has car insurance but it is a requirement so they may or may not have it but their license is revoked if they are stopped without car insurance. Do I have any questions? I'm just talking to myself in my office through this microphone. Yeah, Kathy, that's great. No, it is, webinars can be a little awkward. No, actually we do have a couple of questions and one actually the slide you just went to I think is relevant. Someone just know if you knew why is the temporary license not valid for identification? It's only for the purposes of driving strictly for the purposes of driving and that's only driving. And I think it's an issue where I think it's, to me I think it might be an immigration issue so that they don't want to feel like I don't know, people who are undocumented are taking advantage of the system and they're trying to get driver's license and get things that they don't. I mean that's my perception but I think that there's other ways that they can, at least I know of, for people who are undocumented they can get something that's called the matricula consular through the Mexican consulate in Chicago and that's just generic ID for that. Okay. That's what people, yeah. So there's other ways to get something that is valid for identification not the driver's license. Yes, correct. For those of us who have regular driver's license that can serve as our form of ID. Yes, and so like for example, if someone comes in our library really strives to make everybody feel comfortable so we don't ask, we use the matricula consular to issue library cards to people because I think people will use, sometimes use their children's library card because they don't, they're afraid of we're considered a government entity so that's something that we accept. We accept the matricula consular to issue library cards to patrons. Okay. Another question was from earlier. These programs that you did, when were you doing these programs? Was this just last year or it started, it started two years ago. So it was December 2012. Like the first program that you were talking about with the the first program before the life, yeah, the production one, you know, that one, these are all the programs you're talking about were started at about the same time? Not at the same time. The first one, DACA was in December. So it was kind of an opportune time because the law had just been passed in June. And then the temporary driver's license, that's something I started in January of this year. Okay. And actually, I've done it, I did it in January and then I did it again this fall. I think it was October or September. And both times, the turnout was pretty high. I mean, for us, high means 30 people. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So there was definitely a good response from our community. Okay, great. That's all the questions we had at the moment. If anyone does have any questions, I'll just remind you, you can use the questions section of your GoToWebinar interface, type in your questions. I am monitoring them here. If you have a microphone and you want to use your microphone, just like Kathy and I are using ours to ask a question, just use the raise hand option on your on your GoToWebinar interface and I can unmute you and you can ask your question that way. Yeah, that's all the questions we had at the moment. So go ahead and continue. Okay, great. So getting back to the temporary driver's license, I think it's really been something that's been beneficial for people who are driving without a license and not really knowing the rules of the road. But there's also some drawbacks to having a temporary driver's license or the process of applying. Obviously one of them is it's not used as proof of identity. So I guess if someone asked me, I have this temporary driver's license and if I can't use it for a valid form of ID and I would refer them to the consulate in Chicago to get in the matricula consular, which is a Mexican national identification. There is a possibility of deportation unfortunately. You know, they do a background check obviously into an individual and so there is a possibility of deportation. And I think within the last couple months I've heard of one case I think on in the news I think where someone was deported. So I mean I don't know how many per year people are deported, you know, related to applying for a license. And the license itself isn't issued immediately. So when you go to renew your license and they issue it immediately, I mean at least in Illinois they do, it's not issued immediately so that they do, you know, they have to do a background check, etc. And then they mail it to the person. So when it, you know, the proof of identity issue, you know, can't be used to board an airplane or even entering a federal building or getting a firearm permit. So there's been some administrative glitches with the temporary driver's license. The sheer volume of people was, you know, the response was, the system was really inundated. And the state of Illinois is only was able to process 100,000 applications yearly and they got 500, you know, 500,000 applicants. So there's significant wait times for appointments. There's been difficulties in getting appointments by phone because we've had patrons ask about that. There's also the ability to get an appointment online. But again, in the beginning, there was only, I think, six facilities that were actually issuing them and now they've expanded it, I think through most of the state of Illinois. So when ICIRR, the organization that we worked with for the temporary driver's license, had said that, you know, technically you could make an appointment in Springfield, which is, you know, the capital. If you lived in Chicago land just so you would get it issued. So, I mean, it's been kind of a challenge for, administratively. So, the next program that I, that I did at our library was around citizenship. And I worked with a federal organization, the United States Immigration and Custom Service, which is based in Chicago. The USCIS and the Institute of Museum and Library Services have an ongoing partnership, I think, that developed probably a little over a year ago. And so, the USCIS has awarded, you know, 10 million dollars in grants to different organizations throughout the country who are helping people to prepare for citizenship. And libraries really play a crucial role in serving immigrant communities, you know, obviously, which is evident through the partnership. And so, the citizenship with USCIS, I attended a workshop hosted by the Evanston Public Library and it was to inform staff, and this was in September of 2013. And I actually didn't have citizenship until, I think, summer, the summer, this past summer. So, the USCIS does outreach to organizations serving immigrant populations and educating not only potential applicants, but also staff that works with them. So, I contacted the community officer with the USCIS and set a date for presentation, oh, it's February 2014, excuse me, I'm getting my dates mixed up. So, there was also no registration for the event because it was more lecture style. So, it basically went over the eligibility requirements, the process of naturalization, the citizenship tests, and the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. So, I think that they, I think they do like a general overview workshop and then they have another one where they do a mock interview. So, two people from the USCIS come and do like a mock interview to, you know, help people kind of prepare for the interview process of citizenship. So, I did the usual channels of advertisement, Facebook, and flyers in the library. There was a lower turnout, I think we had maybe three to five people, and it seems like there's not as many people at the citizenship stage in our community. That's what I'm guessing. It doesn't mean that I probably will try it again. The benefits of citizenship, obviously automatic citizenship for a lawful permanent resident children, once someone becomes a citizen, their children under the age of 18 also are citizens. You know, the ability to travel and, you know, seek protection of the U.S. government, protection from deportation for you and your children. You get to vote. I mean, you're better able to participate in society fully. I mean, so some of the drawbacks of the process of citizenship, I'm not saying that becoming a citizen is a bad thing. I'm just saying the possibility, again, is still there of deportation when going through the naturalization process. Also, there's a possible language barrier for some people. Only people over the age of 50 with 20 years residing in the U.S. or the age of 55 with 15 years can take the naturalization test in their native language. But those people also have to have very, very limited English. So that's one of the possible drawbacks for the process of becoming a citizen. So here are some of the resources, especially with the USCIS, that I want to plug, because they have really actually a lot of really good resources for citizenship. They have, and I have links at the end of my presentation, the Citizenship Resource Center. It has these three tabs, the learners, which has information on how to study for the test, test questions, finding help in your community. Under the teachers tab, there's lesson plans and activities, training, and professional development. Then organizations, they also have program development. If you're interested in providing citizenship classes and also information on the grant program. The USCIS and the IMLS partnership, the Institute of Museum and Library Libraries, they create, like I mentioned before in the beginning of my presentation, the partnership in June, oh, 2013. It's 2013. It's really to help libraries give accurate and useful information on immigration and citizenship, promote awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensure the integrity of the immigration system. And that's taking from the IMLS New Americans website, which the link I have later. And also the IMS, I am sorry, IMLS also has links to webinars to train staff on immigration related topics. So this is also a really good resource to libraries that might not have more direct access to the USCIS. Also, there was an initiative, it was probably a couple years ago, of citizenship corners and libraries. So it's basically creating a designated area of the library for citizenship resources. And some libraries, I think it was between the USCIS and the Los Angeles Public Libraries, which has I think 73 libraries. But they created a space, a designated space for resources and materials. And so some of the items, they included our test questions, information on naturalization and the N40 form, which is used to fill out as a naturalization form. And also the USCIS has print materials on citizenship that you're able to order through their websites. And also, we actually have one of these at our library, order a USCIS civics and citizenship tool kit for free. So if you're an organization that serves immigrants, you get one free kit. And inside the kit has, I think it's a DVD and it also has a book and it has flashcards on citizenship questions. So it's also another really good way to serve immigrants in your community. And we don't have a citizenship corner at our library because we're somewhat limited with space. But I really like that idea. And so, let's see where, I don't have any more signs. I thought I had more, there was more. Okay, so questions. Sure. Okay, great. Kathy, that was great. Did you have more that you said you want, you thought you had more slides? Do you have other programs you want to talk about or? No, no more slides. And I think there was a delay. I have the afterward this question slides. I have some online resource links. Mostly, I think I have three from CIS. And then something of one for the national legal directory for immigrants for each state. So each state, I imagine, has hopefully at least one organization that works with immigrants. Right, their own local. So does anybody have any questions for Kathy about any of the programs she was talking about here or anything to share about programs that you've done similarly in your library? Go ahead and type them into the questions section of the go to webinar interface. I'll grab them here. While we're waiting to see if any who does have any questions, we can go to those links if you want to show them there. We will post these every time we do a show here. We'll get the slides from presenters, so Kathy will send me her slides. When I put up the record and you'll have access to the slides and we'll put these links into our delicious account at the library commission so you can have a quick link to them as well. So we'll have all the resources that were mentioned here. You'll be able to get to them. Okay, doesn't look like any major questions are coming in. I was just wondering, you have a lot of varying programs here on different things that people need to, you know, like I said, legal information that people need. Did you have, I know you said the attendance varied depending on the program. Did you have a lot of trouble convincing people? It was depending on the program, like convincing that this was something they needed to do or, you know, what do you think was the reasoning why some of them came out seemed better, you know, seemed better reception than other ones. It's possible. Well, I think the temporary driver's license was kind of a pressing issue, I guess, or the DACA one was kind of a more pressing current issue and citizenship possibly there might not be as many people in our district that might not be at that point in order to apply for citizenship. It's not maybe as a pressing issue, I guess. It's not super important for people to become a citizen because of X consequence, I guess, maybe. So that's kind of what my guess is. I would definitely do it again just because I don't want to assume that there aren't people that want that information, but they left USCIS left, you know, they left free literature for us, so I definitely put that in the Spanish collection and I have a small area for pamphlets of local information. Yeah, you never know when people are going to need that info and when they decide to become a citizen, it's not like a certain time of year or anything. And like you said, the other programs, they were recent changes to the laws and new regulations and things people had to jump on and it was right in front of everybody's mind, of course. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So it doesn't look like anybody had any other questions right now, so that's great, not a problem. Oh wait, something did just pop up, sorry. Okay, do you did you help people complete applications? No, I think for the DACA, our library in general, I would prefer people, I guess, refer to a lawyer because it's kind of a touchy issue. I don't want to give legal advice to anybody about how they should answer a question if they don't know how to answer a question. So and there is through the Illinois Bar Association lawyers that work pro bono. There's also locally, and I'd like to tap into it and I haven't had an opportunity, DePaul University in Chicago has an immigration clinic that it's a possibility for to refer people to. Obviously, they're students, but it could be a good resource for somebody also. Yeah, that's something that's common in when it comes to legal information and health information that we can show you where to go, we can show you where to contact someone, but we're really not qualified to take that extra step. And but if you have places, that's great. You have places that you can refer them to that are the right people can that know and are, you know, even potentially legally allowed to give them the assistance. Yeah, that's great to find those resources. Definitely. Uh huh. Yeah. So any other last minute questions from anybody? You want to get them in there before we wrap up for the morning? And you can always contact me. My first I think my first slide has my email address. So if other questions come up, you know, definitely feel free to contact me. Yeah. If you want to try and try some of these programs in your own library, definitely. Yeah, great. All right. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you very much. That was very interesting. A lot of great resources for people. Absolutely. Thank you very much. I'm great. It was great to be just to talk about what I'm doing in my library. All right. So hold on for a bit. We'll just wrap up the show here. I'm going to pull back, presenter control. So I can show my screen here. There we go. There it is. All right. So thank you very much, everyone, for attending Encompass Live today. The show is being recorded and will be available all later this afternoon, potentially. As I said, we'll have the slides Kathy will send to me and links to all the websites that she mentioned will be included when we put up the recording on the Encompass Live website we have here. And I will announce and let you guys all know when that's available. So that wraps up for day show. I hope you join us next week when our topic is the best new youth books of 2014. Sally Snyder is the coordinator of Children's and Young Adult Library Services here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And every year she does book talks of new titles for teens, everything from preschool all the way up through high school, older teens. She does this at our state library conference in the fall. And then we bring her on the show so that she can redo it again for anyone who wasn't able to attend in the actual conference. And so this will be good for anybody who serves children, teens, young adults, come and see what new titles are coming out that were new this year. So Encompass Live is on Facebook so if you are a big Facebook user you can go ahead and like us over on Facebook. We will post new shows that are coming up, reminders when the recordings are available here post your reminder this morning just letting people know we can log on for today's show. So if you are into using Facebook go ahead and like us there and we'll keep you up to date on what we are doing on the show. Other than that, thank you very much for attending. We are wrapped up for today. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.