California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation

CRLAF's Immigration Project: Collective work is organized across three different project areas: Affirmative Legal Services, Removal Defense, and San Joaquin Immigrant Empowerment. The Immigration Project provides community education, legal training to qualified legal services providers, assistance to eligible immigrants applying for affirmative immigration benefits, and representation before USCIS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The Removal Defense Project provides direct representation in detained and non-detained court cases. The AOD program provides training, technical assistance, and scheduling support to pro bono attorneys to increase their capacity to represent individuals who otherwise would lack representation in Immigration Court. The San Joaquin Immigrant Empowerment Project's work centers around the complex intersection of public health, immigrants' rights, and immigration law. During this fiscal year, we focused especially on providing immigration legal services, advocacy, education and outreach, and legal training. The Immigration Project also provided technical assistance to other community partners addressing two major challenges facing immigrant communities: the quickly-changing federal administration's enforcement priorities and updates to case processing, and to the impacts on undocumented workers' rights and remedies due to their immigration status. We additionally provide regular immigration legal services to survivors of crime at a women's center in San Joaquin County. Most of CRLAF's immigration cases in this region are humanitarian cases, such as U visa, T visa, or VAWA applications. From San Joaquin to near Fresno county, CRLAF is one of the only organizations currently taking these types of cases at no cost to the client, as most of the individuals we serve do not have the means to hire a private attorney, and there is a huge unmet need for attorneys to take on humanitarian aid cases pro bono in this region. CRLAF plans to continue building community capacity to support such work moving forward. Finally, in FY25, in furtherance of its role as a statewide support center, and in line with its strong history as an incubator for new projects that expand capacity and resources to support our client communities, CRLAF incubated and spun off part of its immigration unit as an independent 501(c)(3) organization to provide expanded direct immigration legal services in the Sacramento Valley. CRLAF provided $500,000 in startup funds and subgranted additional funds to ensure continuity of services for clients being served by the spin off.

Sustainable Rural Communities (SRCP): CRLAF's Sustainable Rural Communities Project works to ensure equal access to healthcare for California's farmworker and rural indigent population through a three-part strategy of health data development, analysis and dissemination; public policy analysis and discussion; and community outreach, education, capacity building, and advocacy. This project addresses the systemic causes of our communities' poverty, poor health, and degraded environments due to lack of regulatory enforcement and generational disinvestment. We coordinate with other advocates on a local, regional, and statewide strategy to craft large-scale solutions around healthcare for all, environmental justice issues (land use, unmet transit needs, water quality), foster more accountable and inclusive governance, and direct financial resources to rural, farmworker, migrant, immigrant, and disadvantaged communities. Safe Drinking Water: Since 2015, our team has administered an Interim Emergency Bottled Water program to the two unincorporated farmworker communities in western Fresno County with over 700 residents. CRLAF continues to advocate with Cantua Creek and El Porvenir residents for clean, safe drinking water access, while simultaneously working with California's Water Resources Control Board to ensure the communities' uninterrupted bottled water delivery until a permanent solution is reached. Statewide Drought Project: In 2022, CRLAF was selected to lead a statewide three-year drought resilience project to identify and develop an innovative and collaborative policy platform and to conduct efforts centering farmworker communities economic opportunities and access to water and other resources in California's ongoing drought. As a result of this three-year collaborative work, we were able to leverage funding for community education and infrastructure projects for the San Joaquin Valley, Inland Empire, and California's Central Coast. We also provided advocacy for the state's climate bond to benefit these regions.Farmworker Health Study: CRLAF led a budget request to update a 20-year old study of farmworker health data that CRLAF had initiated and advocated for UC Merced Community and Labor Center to undertake. We gained final approval in the state budget for a 3-year study in the amount of $1.5 million. The study was published by UC Merced in 2023. The data has been used to inform policy and demonstrate the severe inequities that rural farmworkers and their families face. This study and our on-the-ground work with affected communities has been instrumental in strengthening our argument for stronger health and safety protections for all rural client communities. We continue to use this report for advocacy and improving access to health care coverage for rural immigrants.Health4All: Over the past couple of years, CRLAF has provided critical support and advocacy alongside various other coalitions and organizations to defend the two recent Medi-Cal expansions, first for undocumented elderly aged 50 and above, then for young adults aged 19-26, as federal cuts and resulting state cuts will further negatively impact farmworkers and reverse progress on eliminating the uninsured and underinsured healthcare access gaps. These actions will exacerbate already disparate health care access for thousands of California residents.