(The national perspective is excerpted from Out of Many, One - A History of the Immigration and Refugee Services of America * Network, 1998, IRSA, by Margi Dunlap and Nicholas Montalto)

The USCRI network has worked to spread its message of tolerance and understanding to a broader community. In cities and towns across the United States, USCRI and its partner agencies advocate for rights of immigrants and refugees and for fair and just policies.

In 1922 Interpreter Releases was founded. It became the pre-eminent journal of immigration law that is the basic tool for legal practitioners. For many years, USCRI operated a news service for the foreign language press. It commissioned and translated articles about American life and customs into several languages.

During the Depression, and again after World War II, USCRI fought against the unfair deportations of Mexican workers. On the West Coast, after Pearl Harbor, the USCRI network worked to prevent the forced relocation of US-born Japanese Americans. Many in the USCRI network struggled to ease the hardships created by this unjust treatment of American citizens.

Speaking engagements were also part of the daily of network agency executives and staff. Interest has always existed about the lives, experiences, and customs of newcomers. In one year – 1943 – staff and volunteers of the International Institute of Minnesota made more than 300 speeches.

In 1968, the International Institute of Los Angeles published a study of Chinese and Japanese Americans that led to the establishment of the first Asian Service Center in the country.

In the late 1970s, a unified national effort was spearheaded to gain the passage and enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980. For the first time in US history, the Act acknowledged that refugees and displaced people were an ongoing international and national responsibility and not just a crisis of the moment.

USCRI joined the efforts of broad national coalitions to advocate for equitable asylum policies for Salvadorans victimized by civil war in their country, winning for those who were already here the right to remain in the country. The network also worked to create an amnesty provision in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Thus, three million people who had been living in the country without documents got the right to remain and move toward citizenship.

Today, USCRI national staff is frequently asked to educate congressional committees and other policy-making bodies about issues that shape our work. A close partnership with other national voluntary agencies assures that the voices of refugees and immigrants are heard and that their concerns are reflected in the development and implementation of policy. Publications such as the World Refugee Survey are highly respected as the definitive, eyewitness accounts of human suffering and persecution throughout the world.
 

* IRSA changes its name to US Committee for Refugees & Immigrants (USCRI) in 2004