OUR OBLIGATIONS TO IMMIGRANTS
America has a long history of reinventing itself. Successive waves of immigrants have both changed and enriched American society for centuries. Today, new immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America are traveling old paths to our cities and towns.
I believe that all children should have access to our schools. Education has always made this country stronger. Our public schools embrace children from all economic and cultural backgrounds. Our teachers instill American values, and our classrooms produce successive generations of Americans.
Denying access to education is neither in keeping with our history nor in our own best interests. We must educate children and their parents so that they can be productive members of our communities to support themselves and Maryland’s growing economy. This is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity.
The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny any child in America the right to an education based on immigrant status. Immigrants, whether or not they are citizens, are people “in any ordinary sense of the term” and, therefore, are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Montgomery County is rich with diversity and home to the largest foreign-born population in Maryland. More than 240,000 County residents were born outside the United States. Sixty-nine percent of that population participates in the local workforce, and more than 63 percent of those are women.
As President of the Montgomery County Commission for Women, I have had the unique opportunity to learn about the special needs of immigrant women in the workplace and to actively participate in addressing these problems. I’ve worked with my colleagues on the Commission to provide immigrant women with the resources they need to succeed in the workplace. Recognizing that immigrant women often face the most serious challenges to finding jobs and needed services for their families, the Commission’s Immigrant Women Obtaining Resources and Knowledge (IWORK) project disseminates information to workers and educates employers and the general public about the plight of immigrant workers. Brochures in five languages (English and the other most commonly spoken languages in Montgomery County -- Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean) focus on sexual harassment in the workplace and employment rights of pregnant women. The Commission has also recently published an Employment Guide for Domestic Workers in English, French, and Spanish.
Sex and race discrimination, low wages, long hours, no maternity benefits, and sexual harassment can be problems for any woman, but these issues reach new levels of urgency when the employee is an immigrant woman with language barriers and limited access to information about her rights.