Recruiting and hiring more bilingual staff in state agencies, and continuing to require state employees complete anti-immigrant bias training.
These are a few of the recommendations in a new report by the Illinois Immigrant Impact Task Force, a group created by the General Assembly in 2021 to help immigrant communities.
Ruth Lopez McCarthy is a senior immigration fellow at the Illinois Department of Human Services and is working with the task force.
“Right now, we’re really in this dissemination component,” said Lopez McCarthy. “Then we’ll move on to the next steps of the implementation, I’m working with the different agencies in the governor’s office to see what comes next.”
Maggie Rivera is a task force member and president of the Illinois Migrant Council. She says they’d now like to plan a meeting with Governor J-B Pritzker.
“The next step would be to follow up those recommendations and make sure that they’re implemented, so that they just don’t sit there in black and white paper,” said Rivera.
Lopez McCarthy said she hopes the report will help people gain a better understanding of the importance of being a welcoming state for immigrants.
