14th Amendment Campaign

The NCIWR Roundtable, a discussion on the diverse movements impacted by the attacks on the 14th Amendment, was recorded on March 16th, 2011. The entire roundtable is embedded below.

Women, immigration and citizenship

Critics of immigrants have launched a full-scale advocacy campaign of fear and resentment about immigrant women and their families. Misconstruing basic facts about immigration and using phrases like “lawless destructive anarchy of invasion,” “anchor babies,” and illegal alien invader,” anti-family, anti-immigrant lawmakers are advocating legislation at the state and federal level that would deny citizenship laws.

Like all women in our society, immigrant women deserve equality, dignity, and human rights. We are working to elevate women’s voices and push back against dehumanizing rhetoric and attacks on immigrant women and their families.

The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR) is the only national collaboration to specifically focus on women and gender issues in the public discourse on immigration. We work to elevate women’s voices and push back against dehumanizing attacks. The coalition represents more than 40 leading organizations with a presence nationally and in every state.

Interested in joining the campaign? Click here to submit an agreement form: Agreement Form

To request a media interview or background information about women and immigration, please contact Camino PR at 212-255-2575 or click here to send us an email.

Campaign principles: women, immigration and citizenship

  1. We condemn any actions that vilify or dehumanize women, – often especially directed at women of color – and mothers, by calling them “invaders”, “aliens” and similar terms.
  2. Strong families are the foundation of successful communities. We oppose policies that unnecessarily separate families. We champion policies that support families and improve the health, education and well-being of all children.
  3. The 14th amendment is one of the great civil rights achievements in American history. Our groups stand united in its original purpose to prevent discrimination in all forms.
  4. Immigrants have always helped strengthen the very fabric of America, and they continue to do so today.
  5. We condemn policy movements that attempt to target women and their children as a remedy to xenophobic distrust and hatred of certain racial groups, religions or people from a certain geographic origin, which is antithetical to core American values.

Policy documents

A resource from Priscilla Huang, JD from the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review that puts the latest attacks on women and the 14th Amendment in a gender and reproductive justice context

This short piece is written in response to the initial release of the attacks on women of color and the 14th Amendment. This article gives a brief legal analysis of what is taking place but also critically links that analysis to the aggressive nature of these attacks towards targeted populations.

NCIWR’s previous campaigns include:

• Advocating for the removal of the HPV vaccine mandate for immigrant girls. NCIWR successfully campaigned with national, state and local partners in the reproductive justice, women’s health, immigrant rights, medical and public health movements to pressure the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to remove the mandatory vaccination requirement for immigrant women and girls to receive the HPV vaccine. After 17 months on the books, the CDC officially removed the mandate on December 14, 2009.

• Revision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Standards: In collaboration with Human Rights Watch, Women’s Refugee Commission, the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, and the ACLU, NCIWR was able to persuade Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials (ICE) to accept a a set of provisional women’s health standards in detention centers. In November 2009, ICE agreed to incorporate those standards in the revised Performance-Based national Detention Standards.

• Communicating with the White House and Capitol Hill on the impact of comprehensive immigration reform on immigrant women and families. Through in-person meetings at the White House and Hill briefings with Congress, NCIWR has led the campaign to insert women’s voices into comprehensive immigration reform efforts.