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Meeting Information



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Immigrant Rights Commission
Minutes of Meeting on July 9, 2007 at City Hall – Room 416

The meeting was called to order by Commissioner Sonia Melara (Chair) at 5:05 p.m.

I.       ROLL CALL

Members Present:  Sonia Melara (Chair), Gilberto Alexander, Elahe Enssani, Deborah Escobedo, Vera Haile, Solomon Jones, Felix Levy, Angus McCarthy, Samira Causevic McCoy, Sam Ng and Toye Moses.

 

Members Absent (Excused) Jamal Dajani, Diana Lau and Phu Nguyen.

 

Staff  Present:  Dang Pham, Executive Director and Marie Mitchell, Commission Secretary.

 

Guests Present: 

·        Joe Aguiar, student from UC Berkeley

·        Brenda Perez, student from UC Berkeley

 

II.     APPROVAL OF MINUTES 

 

       Commissioner Haile made the motion to approve the draft of the minutes of June 11th meeting, and Commissioner Samira McCoy seconded it.  The Commission approved the draft minutes of June meeting.

 

III.    PRESENTATION

 

       Commissioner Levy made the introduction and informed Commissioners that he was very impressed with the group of immigrant students who were on a hunger strike for about a week in front of City Hall. Most of their demands were on behalf of the children who had come to the United States, not necessarily with their parents, whose current status are illegal immigrants.

        

       Mr. Joe Aguiar, a student from UC Berkeley, thanked the Commission for allowing him to be present.

 

       Ms. Brenda Perez, a recent graduate from UC Berkeley, was one of the student organizers of the event.  She’s a recipient of the Rising American Scholarship through Education at UC Berkeley.  Students from 26 colleges and universities from all overCalifornia had a week long fast, which began on July 2, 2007 and ended on July 9, 2007, in front of the Civic Center Plaza.

 

       The students shared that the purpose of the hunger strike was to urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take the leadership role in moving forward the DREAM Act to the House Floor for consideration.  This Act was a bipartisan bill that would grant conditional legal status to adults and undocumented students who had graduated from high school, and who were unable to move on to a higher education due to lack of financial resources.  The hunger strike also came in light of the resistance from Congress to pass the Immigration Reform, to let Congress know how important our immigration reform is to the immigrant students.

 

       Commissioner Melara suggested that the students write a letter from their office informing the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors that the Immigrant Rights Commission did pass the resolution a few years ago to support the DREAM Act.

 

IV.    COMMITTEE REPORT

 

1.      Executive Committee

 

The Committee suggested that in the future agenda, the Commission should have the Committee report items.

 

2. Outreach Committee

 

The Outreach Committee recommended that the next neighborhood meeting should be held in Chinatown in December 2007. 

 

The Commission would like to have such meeting in the month of October 2007, and requested the Outreach Committee discuss this matter at their next meeting.

 

3. Immigration Reform Ad hoc Committee

 

Commissioner Melara and Commissioner Enssani suggested the Committee discuss a follow up meeting to advise the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors on the immigration reform related issues.

 

4. Program & Access Committee

 

The Program & Access Committee reported that the final version of the 2007 EAS Compliance Annual Report would be submitted to the full Commission for their consideration at the August meeting.

 

V.    DIRECTOR'S REPORT

 

1.      2007 Language Access Compliance Plans

  At their last meeting on June 27, 2007, the Program & Access Committee reviewed the 

  additional information provided by the Juvenile Probation Department and the Adult

  Probation Department.  The Committee will present the 2007 report to the full

 Commission at the next meeting for consideration.

 

2.   Sanctuary City Campaign

  The Director attended the planning meeting of the public campaign for the Sanctuary City Campaign on June

 11, 2007.  The main purpose of the campaign is to ensure the continued use of services by the City’s

  immigrant communities and to educate the public and city workers about the Sanctuary Ordinance.

 

  The Department of Public Health is tasked with developing and implementing a media and public education

  campaign to effectively inform immigrant residents and city employees on the Sanctuary Ordinance.

 

  The media campaign will utilize all venues necessary to transmit its message to the target communities.  In 

  general, the City wants to send the message that it’s safe for immigrants to use the city services, and that San

  Francisco is a city for everyone.

 

3.   Meeting with Tier 1 City Departments

            * Police Department

On June 15, 2007, The Director joined Tomas Lee and Sally Leung of the Office of Language Services to meet with Chief Heather Fong and her staff to talk about the role and responsibilities of the newly created Office of Language Services.  At this meeting, we discussed the City’s effort to centralize the translation services to ensure the quality and cost effective for the services.  In addition, we also shared our suggestions for the draft on the new RFP for translation services.

            * Human Services Agency (HSA)

On June 19, 2007, the Director also joined Tomas Lee and Sally Leung of the Office of Language Services to meet with the members of the Bilingual Services Committee (BSC).

BSC was established by Trent Rhorer, Executive Director of HSA to recommend department policies, set practices and develop strategies to improve bilingual services, and to ensure agency compliance with provisions of the City’s Equal Access Ordinance.  BSC members are appointed by program managers and meet bimonthly.

At this meeting, we discussed with the Committee about the City’s efforts to centralize the translation service to ensure the quality and cost effective for the services.  In addition, the HAS will forward to us their suggestions for the draft of the new RFP for translation services.

 

VI.    IMMIGRANT RIGHTS SUMMIT

        

Commissioner Melara reported that the Summit Planning Committee had finalized all the letters to be sent to the speakers, sponsors and honorary committee members.  In fact, the Committee already received responses from the honorary committee members.

 

The Director responded to the previous inquiry from the Commission regarding the stipends for the interns.  According to the City Attorney’s Office, all interns were directly responsible to the City Administrator’s Office, and Mr. Edwin Lee had assigned them to work on the Immigrant Rights Summit. Therefore, the Commission should consider a motion to approve the stipend of $1,500 for each intern.

 

Commissioner Levy moved to discuss the interns being paid out of the Commission’s Summit budget of $50,000.  Commissioner Haile seconded it.

 

VII. CHARTERED COMMISSION ISSUE

 

Commissioner Melara stated that this item had been put on the agenda because some Commissioners would like to strengthen the Commission.

 

To take into consideration of the timing, Commissioner Jones indicated that it is impossible for the Commission to place this item on the ballot for the upcoming November election.

 

VIII. PUBLIC COMMENTS

 

         No public comments.

 

IX.    ADJOURNMENT

 

With no further discussion, Commissioner Levy moved and seconded by Commissioner Escobedo to adjourn the meeting.  The meeting was adjourned at 7:05 pm.