Hey, everyone, I would like to welcome you to today's webinar. Responding to immigrant sexual and domestic violence survivors part 2. Tips and tools to assist in achieving access to health care and public benefits. This webinar is brought to you through the international association of forensic nurses technical assistance project. We are grateful to be able to host Leslie or and from the national immigrant women's advocacy project for today's webinar. I would like to share a few housekeeping items with you before we begin. Today's webinar is possible due to funding provided through the office on violence against women. And the presenters of today's webinar disclose no conflict of interest. If you have multiple people watching today's webinar with you, please send a list of all attendees that have not formally registered to safe at forensic nurses dot, or and share the evaluation link with them. Members of are eligible to receive 1 and a half contact hours for this continuing education activity. I, a fan is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the American nurses credentialing centers commission on accreditation. For members to obtain C. E. for this activity, they are asked to attend the webinar in full and complete the post activity webinar evaluation to obtain a certificate. Documenting the contact hours for this activity for non members with the completion of the post activity webinar evaluation, you will receive a certificate of attendance. This webinar is being reported today and will be available on the safety a website for viewing at a later date. All registered attendees will receive an announcement. Once the webinar is available for viewing. My name is Corinne and I am a nursing a forensic nursing specialist with. I would like to introduce today's presenters. With us, we have Leslie or law. Adjunct professor and director of the National immigrant women's advocacy project. American University, Washington College of law. And presenting with Leslie, we have Raffaella Rodriguez immigrant women's law and policy fellow national immigrant women's advocacy project. If it's okay with the 2 of you, I will turn it over to you to get started. Thank you, Corinne. Welcome, everyone. Um, thank you for joining us today. This is part 2 of a 2 part series. Um, and we hope you if you were going to present it in a way so that if you joined us for the first part, it won't be a repeat at all. We'll be diving a little bit deeper into Access to health care and other public benefits for immigrant survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. And for those of you that are joining for the first part, we will do it in a way that you can catch up on this one and then go back and watch the first one. Next slide, please. So the learning objectives today is by the end of this webinar, you'll be able to identify the full range of benefits for each immigrant survivors and children are eligible in your state. You're going to learn how to navigate on the UOPS public benefits map, charts and tools that we have. And you're also going to learn about accompanying immigrant survivors when they or their children are eligible for benefits in applying for such benefits. So we want to know who is here today with us. And if you can, yeah, check the box, answer the poll in front of you, what best describes you. You are a SANE forensic nurse, healthcare professional, victim advocate, an attorney or other. If you're other, please type in the chat. Okay, so we have 60% of sane forensic nurse, we have also 16% of victim advocate, health care professionals, we have some attorneys as well, and we have other professional state clinician staff and others. Is there another poll? Okay, so we want to know who attended the part one of this webinar. Okay, we are waiting for you to answer. We want to know just because we need to understand who was here and how deep we are going to dig in the review of the part one of this webinar. So 71% did not attend part one, and 27% did attend part one of this webinar. So we'll provide a little bit more background on immigration relief, just to make sure, because the two of them, so immigration relief, understanding what survivors qualify for, if they're survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, trafficking, dating violence, or stalking, affects what immigration relief they have. There are certain things, and we talked about this a lot the last session, that everybody qualifies for without regard to immigration status. But today we're going to talk about the things that as victims begin the process of applying for immigration status, they gain greater access to public benefits. Some of those key public benefits are things like subsidized health care, housing, post-secondary educational grants and loans. But we are going to start with a short overview of immigration options. Next slide. And I don't have slides. So basically, any time you encounter a survivor, the easiest way to think about this, a victim who has suffered any of these list of criminal activities, they are eligible for some form of immigration relief. There's a whole range of different kinds of immigration relief that Congress created that helps crime victims, victims of abuse, victims of domestic violence, victims of child abuse, abandonment, and neglect. And so the main thing to know is that any time you're working with somebody where you detect that one of these things has occurred, chances are they're eligible for immigration relief and it would be a good idea to connect them with a victim services provider who can help them, who has expertise in serving immigrant victims with regard to immigration. We have a directory in the materials that we're sharing with you today where you can look up in your state where those programs are and we also provide technical assistance in helping you locate those programs. Next slide, please. If you can skip the slides, I just give you control of the slides as well. I'm going to see. Oh, I see. Okay. Thank you. So basically, one of the big differences among the different kinds of immigration relief has to do with how long it takes from filing till that person gets work authorization. Because economically and experience-wise, what we're seeing is it's at the point where people get work authorization where their lives really begin to change dramatically in a positive way. And it's at that point of work authorization where some immigrants begin to get greater access to public benefits. So just to review for those of you that weren't on webinar one, when the abuser, when it's intimate partner violence or family violence and the abuser is either the U.S. citizen, a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident who is the spouse, parent, or step-parent of a victim that you're working with, that victim may qualify for something called either one of the VAWA forms of relief, the VAWA self-petition, VAWA cancellation, or the battered spouse waiver. There are some elder abuse cases where you might have an over 21-year-old U.S. citizen child who's the abuser. They would also qualify for one of those forms of relief. And as you can see, those forms of relief move relatively quickly. The self-petition when the abuser is a lawful permanent resident can take almost three years, but it's certainly shorter than the five-year wait for U visas, which is crime victim visas, which are what all victims of sexual assault are eligible for without regard to what their abuser status. Special immigrant juvenile status is when, is for any child where the abuse, abandonment, or neglect occurred by, was perpetrated by one of their parents, could be anywhere in the world. And those children get access to healthcare immediately upon filing and get access to work authorization and subsidized healthcare in many states roughly six months after filing, six months to three years after filing. Trafficking victims generally have faster access to work authorization and benefits access than any other group of victims. And that's kind of the way to think about. So it's important to be able to detect human trafficking that is occurring both in the labor context, in sex trafficking, and within families, because you could have people who would have very long waits to relief if they went through the U visa process who could get much quicker access to relief and more access to benefits if they're identified as trafficking. So let's kind of return to the scenario we were talking about yesterday, last time we met, and in the first part, and show you how these, in using this scenario, how access to benefits varies in this case scenario, and how immigrants can qualify for multiple forms of relief, and why they, especially if they're seeking access to healthcare, may choose one form of relief over another. So returning to the Clara and Eduardo story, Clara met Eduardo, a lawful permanent resident, when he came back to his hometown to visit his family in El Salvador. Eduardo started dating Clara, who was raising her nine-year-old son Miguel. After Clara became pregnant and gave birth to baby girl Lupe, Eduardo decided to bring Clara, Lupe, and Miguel to the United States to live with him. When they arrived in the U.S., Eduardo took Clara, Miguel, and Lupe's passports, became physically and sexually abusive of Clara, and abusive of Miguel, who tried to protect his mother from Eduardo's abuse. Eduardo also physically beat Lupe when she, quote, when he said she misbehaved. Within a year following their arrival in the United States, Eduardo forced Clara and Miguel to work for his family business and never paid them for their labor. One night, when Miguel was 13 and Lupe was 5, Eduardo's rage led to severe beatings with the belt of both Miguel and Lupe. When Clara intervened to protect the children, Eduardo strangled her until she passed out. The neighbors called the police for help. Clara talked to the police when they arrived. The police arrested Eduardo for attempted murder and child abuse and took Clara to the hospital, placed children in the care of the state. So what this means from a public benefits perspective is, in this case, Clara and Miguel both qualify because they were forced to work by their abuser for a family business and not paid. They both qualify as trafficking victims. And as trafficking victims in most states under federal law, they get access to TANF, food stamps, housing, and education. If they weren't victims of trafficking and they were pursuing a VAWA self petition, which Lupe is eligible for because she was abused by her lawful permanent resident father and Clara is eligible for because she's the mother. Well, she's actually a Flormar Hopkin. Clara would be eligible before if she was married to Eduardo. And Miguel, if there was a marriage between Eduardo and Clara, Miguel would also be eligible to self petition. And you can see that self petitioning children, in particular, get food stamps. They are eligible for TANF in many states. There might be a five-year bar and they get access to public and assisted housing and educational benefits. As children who go through the special immigrant juvenile status process have to wait eight years to get TANF under federal law, unless it's offered by the state. They have to wait. They can get food stamps in one to three years. Same thing with public housing, same thing with education. But you can see that the really long waits, particularly for adults, to all of these benefits are for U visa victims. So all of these, all the people in the story, Clara, Eduardo, and Lupe are all eligible for U visas, but that's the worst option for purposes of public benefits. And that's the way to think about it. Trafficking is the best. It's not the best, but it's the best. Trafficking victims have the greatest access to benefits. U visa victims have the least. VAWA self petitioners have a bit more than SIJS children, but they're both kind of immune. So here, let's test what you just learned from leveling. So pick two forms of immigration where you need to provide the fastest and the most access to public benefits, health care subsidies, and work authorizations. And you can select two. And we have about 19% of you so far. Go ahead and guess. It's all anonymous, so you don't have to bean bags. And then hopefully wait till we get at least half of you to respond. 46%. All right. So, yeah. Go ahead. So I will end the poll and share the results. So 60% choose T visa, 53% chose VAWA self petition, and then 33% U visa and 13% SIJS. Right. And so the answer is T is the first one. So the first two are right. The T visa and VAWA self petitioner have the most access. Actually, SIJS children have much more access than U visa victims. U visas have the least. And the fastest, too. Right. And they're just... Right. They have the least access and the slowest. Yeah. SIJ are way faster than U visas. Correct. Okay. Oops. Both changing. You changed them. Yours? Oh, this one's right. So the last thing to mention is there's a real advantage. And we did spend a little bit of time on this last time. And we're going to have a whole webinar that we can send you an invitation to with the Office of Trafficking in Persons. It's going to be October 3rd. So we invite you to attend that. So basically what happens is if you think of Miguel, who was trafficked by Eduardo, by labor trafficking, what happens is any child who's identified as a potential victim of human trafficking, labor or sex, should be referred to the Office of Trafficking in Persons at HHS, OTIP. And OTIP looks into it. And if they determine that this child has been trafficked, they will issue a child trafficking, an OTIP letter. And that OTIP letter gives children who are victims of human trafficking access to full range of public benefits and social services support services paid for by the federal government without regard to immigration status. And they can begin getting it immediately. Whether or not Miguel ever files a vows of petitioning U visa or T visa, but it gives him access to those public benefits, particularly subsidized health care, while he's waiting for any immigration case to work its way through the process. So it's a very powerful remedy and very, very helpful. And it's available to any child under the age of I believe it's 21. Yeah. So it's really you'll see a lot of children that may qualify or young adults, young people that may qualify. Marcella. Yeah, I was just also want to mention that you also don't need like that open police investigation on trafficking on that person to apply for the OTIP letter, who's going to make a decision about this OTIP letter is the HHS is the Office of Trafficking Persons if they believe on the evidence that was submitted or not. So it doesn't it doesn't. It's not it's actually beneficial to the children to apply and it doesn't have any bad or negative consequences for them, even if the OTIP office, for example, doesn't accept the claim. Right. And one other thing I just realized I misspoke. It's before the child's 18th birthday. Yeah, I was going to say they're 18. OK, so we also want to show it to you. We brought a lot of data regarding how this immigration options and immigration status can change the life of these victims. So we conducted a research of two years ago on 2021. And we also conducted a previous research in 2017 that we can compare and bring it to you how this immigration status can actually change the life of these victims and the survivors. So from the moment of the they receive work authorizations and different actions, we can see an increase in their justice system involvement. So we see a 114% increase in the willingness to trust the police. We have a 36 increase in making police reporting regarding future crimes. And we also see a significant reduction on the use of immigration status and threats about immigration status by the perpetrators. So we can see a 74% of declining the immigration related abuse, a 78% decline in the threats to snatch or cut off access to children. A lot of times perpetrators, they threat to get full custody of children and 65% declining efforts to use immigration status of the victims to gain advantage in the courts. And so in a lot of times this, when we are talking about domestic violence abuse, the immigration status of victims is often used as a form of threats. So you see threats of deportations, you see threats of calling the law enforcement police, but also you see, as we see here, threats about the custody of the child or sending the victims to the courts. We also see an increase, as we mentioned, in the justice system participations, and this is based by the immigration status. So for violence of petitioners, we've seen 62% participate in criminal investigations and prosecutions, and 63% were seeking civil protection orders for them or for their children, and 62% turned to the courts for child custody orders. And a lot of times before they received this immigration status, they are really afraid to go to the courts and fight for the child, the custody of their child, because of their immigration status in the country. UBISA also increased in 17% the participation in active criminal prosecutions and investigations, 67 seeked protection orders, and 64 custody orders. We could also see an improvement for children from the points that the victims receive a work authorization. So we can see a 6.6 fold increase in victims' involvement in their children's schools, an increase in the victims' children being 100% more socially active, 134% were pursuing their own interest, and at the point that they received lawful permanent residency, that this, for example, we are seeing when Leslie was explaining, for UBISA this can happen like 20 years after the applications, but we can see a 65% improvement in children's grades, 125 decrease in disciplinary problems, and 80% become less aggressive as well. And we also have, of course, the economic impact of the work authorization. So at the point that they receive work authorizations, there's a 300% increase in jobs that pay at least the minimum wage, a 542% increase in formal sexual jobs that deduct taxes, and a 43% security jobs with health insurance, sick leave, and vacation paid. So at the point of the lawful permanent residency, that they receive the lawful permanent residency, we can also see a 77% reduction in sexual assault or attempted sexual assault at work. For education and English learning, we also could see an increase on victims taking English learning classes of 226, 167 increase in working to improve English-speaking abilities, and also we have increase in attending social events with people, with American people, people from the US, obtaining GEDs, and pursuing also careers and degrees, and undergrad and graduate degrees as AAs and BAs, and receiving vocational education as well, and advanced degrees that can be graduate degrees, PhDs, masters, and et cetera. So it's really important if you're working with immigrant survivors, one of the first things that we encourage you all to do is identify programs in your community that have expertise serving immigrant survivors, victim advocacy programs, and legal services programs that have this expertise, because one of the things we know, and we've seen over and over again in the research, and in our experience as technical assistance providers, is that basically without advocates and attorneys, immigrant victims don't get any of the help they're legally entitled, and that with advocates and attorneys, they get not only some, but they get more and more help available, and that the data that Rafaela just shared, all of those changes begin to happen in their lives, and they begin to heal, but they don't do so without advocates and attorneys that help them navigate the system. And it's not just immigrant survivors that are limited English proficient that experience this, but it's all immigrant survivors. When we think about it, it makes sense, is that people don't know our system, right? They don't know that rape within a family is a crime. They don't know that there's the kind of help you forensic nurses and the nursing profession offers, or that the legal services, or court system, or police or prosecutor offers to victims without victim advocates and attorney bridging the gap. So we have a directory of programs that we'll talk about in a minute, but it's really important, the first step in all of us doing a better job in serving this population is identifying people we can partner with and refer victims to, so that they get connected to the resources that they're legally entitled to receive. So we wanna know from you, which agencies in your community or state do immigrant survivors trust and are knowledgeable about their legal rights? And you can check all that apply. And we are talking here about legal service programs, faith-based organizations, rape crisis centers, culturally, linguistically specific organizations, domestic violence programs. And if you have others, you can type in the chat. Okay, so we have a lot of legal service programs, faith-based organizations as well, and domestic violence programs are being the top ones in the list. Just wait a second more. While they're bringing in the poll, I'm gonna answer a question that we got in the question and answer box. And it says, are we gonna talk? So the question has to do about what about survivors who have suffered abuse in another country, what's available to them versus, but they haven't been abused in the US. So generally speaking, so special immigrant juvenile status for children who were abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent, the abuse could have happened abroad or in the United States, their eligibility is the same. For trafficking victims to get T visas, the traffic, a portion of the trafficking, some part of the trafficking has to have occurred in the United States. For people who are abused by US citizen or lawful permanent resident spouses or parents, most of the time they have been abused in the United States unless the perpetrator works for the government, the federal government, like military, or let's say at an embassy. So if it's a US government employee working abroad, then the abuse could have happened abroad, all of it, and they qualify. Other than that, the major form of relief, the only form of relief available, let's say to a sexual or domestic violence survivor who was abused outside of the US would be gender-based asylum, which is available, but a very difficult form of relief to get. If you're ever working on a case like that, we can help you get to, the gender-based asylum cases require attorneys with particular expertise in that, and we can help you navigate to the right programs on a case-by-case basis. And also, if I remember correctly, for the OTIP letter, the trafficking could have happened in any place in the world. That's correct. That's correct. Okay, so we've all, sorry, I closed the poll, but we are fine. So I'm gonna open again. So we also wanna share with you that we have a new web directory. We have a directory that has programs with the knowledge and expertise serving immigrant survivors, and it's a state-by-state directory. You have all the states. This directory was built with organizations that we trust working with immigrant survivors and immigrant communities. And you can navigate the directory. We have also the cities where they are. So if you wanna more specifically locate an organization, you can also search by state, but also by the region that you are in the city that you are as well. We also have a new web community of practice. We have a community of practice, which is a peer-to-peer learning experience. We have several meetings throughout the year for victim advocates. So we have a community of practice just for victim advocates for interesting learning from their peers about their experience. And this is a very interesting learning experience because not only you get to learn from your peers, but also like the topics that are gonna be discussed on the community of practice are also chosen by the people who participate in the community of practice. So you get to learn from the most emergent issues that are happening in the field. So we have a community of practice for victim advocates. We also have one for family law attorneys and a round table for law enforcement, prosecutors and system-based advocates as well. We also have the National Judicial Network. This is kind of like a community of practice, but for judges. So it's just judicial officials only, and it focuses on human trafficking and immigrants in the state courts. And I'm gonna put the link to the advocates community of practice in the chat because that's one that seeing nurse examiners, anybody on this call could join that you don't have to be a victim advocate working for a shelter, for example. Basically it means you're a non, in our world it means you're a non-lawyer and that you're working with victims and you could be eligible. It's an OVW funded event that we have and we're gonna be increasing hopefully the frequency of meetings to about every other month starting in January. We meet quarterly, somewhere between four and six times a year right now and we're gonna be increasing that. So if it's something you might wanna think about joining or you might wanna think about encouraging the victim advocates you work with to join. So now we're gonna talk about the process of how, so we're gonna at the latter part of the webinar, we're gonna go into detail about all the different types of immigration or public benefits that immigrant survivors qualify for as they begin applying for immigration relief. However, we're gonna start by talking about what that means from a victim advocacy perspective. And so what happens is for immigrant survivors partially because they're limited English proficient and partially because workers who work for many state agencies don't know what immigrant victims qualify for. And so it's really important that someone, an advocate, a volunteer, somebody working for a faith-based organization, a lawyer accompany the victim in applying for public benefits. And the role they play is helping educate the benefits workers, handing a piece of paper saying, here's what proves she's eligible as an immigrant. Here's your state law that says she's eligible for this benefits program. And it also helps ensure that, because many of the domestic and sexual violence survivors we work with have children who may be citizens so that there could be cases where the children qualify, let's say for food stamps and mom does not. And so it's important to accompany victims when they're applying both for the benefits they qualify for, but also the benefits their children qualify for. So they're not turned away when they're legally entitled to the benefit they're seeking. It also finally helps document. So under immigration law and public benefits law federally, their welfare workers, state welfare workers have an obligation to report to the Department of Homeland Security, anybody they know to be unlawfully in the United States and seeking benefits for themselves that they don't legally qualify for. And the problem is if without good advocacy, they might try to turn in people that are legally eligible for benefits that they shouldn't be turning in, but the benefits workers don't know. And that's why you need an advocate to say, Mrs. Garcia is applying for housing benefits that she's entitled to, but she's not applying for food stamps because she's not qualified for those. So that victims aren't put in a situation and there's somebody there who can advocate and who can document what happens to make sure they get everything they're entitled to, but also that they're not encouraged to apply for things they don't legally qualify for, which sometimes benefits workers will do, and that can get them in trouble with the Department of Homeland Security. Okay, so we have now a poll, true or false. Immigrants applying for benefits for their children can refuse to provide immigration or social security information about themselves. Is it true or is it false? I'm gonna give you a few moments for you to answer. We are 34%. Yep. Okay, so 87% answered that is true, that immigrants applying for benefits can refuse to provide immigration or social security information about themselves. Okay. Yeah, and it is true. Yes, you, they can do it and they should do it, they should not be providing immigration for information, and they're not required. Okay, we'll go to the next slide and I see the question in the box which I'll address when Rafael is next presenting I'll try and fix out the fix the link. So, as to accompaniment. One of the reasons just to summarize again why it's so important is you get victims who are eligible turned away at the door, because they, the benefits worker doesn't think they qualify for some places are all benefits agencies you supposed to provide language access and they don't always do it so they might be denied or turned away. And then they can be denied benefits that benefits that they're eligible for. And it's really important that somebody be present to witness and document what happens to be able to help unravel problems that come up when victims aren't getting what they're legally eligible to receive. Okay, so we have another form. What would you take with you to a public benefits agency with an immigrant survivor. We're going to the public benefits agency to advocate for this immigrant survivor. So what would you bring with you a copy of the state and federal benefits statute be DHS documents showing how victims is eligible for that benefit. See relevant state and federal policies or D, all the above. Yeah, we have a majority of the above. Which is true, it's all of the above. All the pieces and there's a question where it says if your company and they get denied what do you say to that person. Will you ask them why they're being denied, and you write down what they say you get their name and if they have like a badge number something you get that number. And then you ask to speak to a supervisor. Ideally with the materials we're going to provide you through this webinar and the links on our web page. We can help make sure you're walking in with the documents that should help make it not happen but you want to document why there's why they're saying they're denying the person and who was saying, so that we can try to unravel it or there could be an appeal or something like that. So, now we, we are going to review we talked a little bit about this on the last one of this webinar is about how access to benefits and service grows as the victims and their children pursuing immigration. So, we have. We have a status that is called qualified immigrants and qualified immigrants are the ones who receives and have the broader access to public benefits in the US. So qualified immigrants are local permanent residents, including new visas when they receive the lawful permanent residency and SIJ refugees and as leads when they receive also their status of ourselves petitioners and tracking victims with continual presence or bonafide determinations and TV. The ones that generally are not qualified are not qualified immigrants or asylum applicants in the middle of the process of applying for asylums DACA recipients, new visas applicants and recipients, work and student visa holders and undocumented immigrants. So, these lists of immigrants, they have a more restricted access to public benefits in the US. So qualified immigrants can access some federal public benefits, but also, it depends on which benefit benefits they can access. I usually say that there is no easy answer to answer when someone asked us like, what is the public benefits available for immigrants. It depends on a lot of factors, it depends on the immigration status of that person. It depends when they enter in the United States for some public benefits. It depends also if that program on that state has a higher requirement, or, and also it depends if the benefits is offered by the states because we have states where states can offer more than the federal public benefits that is available. States can also have higher requirements and offer less federal public benefits for immigrants. So it actually depends on a number of factors. We didn't put it here, Leslie, the, I was checking we didn't put a link to the public benefits, but the public benefits map, but we have a public benefits map in the new app library, where we, you can look the charts that we have developed that has the eligibility of immigrants to each public benefits, to each federal public benefits, and they are divided by immigration status. So you have what a U visa can, a U visa recipient is eligible for, what a visa petitioner is eligible for, what a SIJ recipient is eligible for, and we have a list of federal public benefits, then the list I can show you in a few minutes. So what is a federal immigrant, what is a federal benefit? A federal benefits or is a federal public benefits or state public benefits and federal means tested public benefits are usually benefits that are made directly to an individual, to a household, or to a family unit. So when we think about what is not a federal public benefits and we think about who can access this public benefits, federal public benefits are the one more restricted, as I mentioned, the immigrants that qualify for this public benefits are generally qualified immigrants. The ones, the other benefits are open, for example, regardless of immigration status, they usually are not a federal benefits that is, that has a payment directly to an individual household or family unit. We can think about, for example, forensic programs that receive, we can think about federal forensic programs that receive, for example, money from U.S. agency as OVW or OVC, you are receiving payment from a federal organization. However, this payment is not made directly for an individual or a household, it's made through two organizations. So therefore, immigrants can access this type of program. The example of what is a federal public benefits is when a U.S. agency funded or provide grants, contracts, loans, and we also have on the list driver's license. Also federal public benefits are retirement, welfare, health, disability, post-secondary education loans, public and assisted housing, food assistance, SNAP, and unemployment insurance as well. So this is a full list of who are the qualified immigrants. We have the local permanent residents, refugees and islanders, Cuban, Haitian entrants, veterans, Amerasians, and trafficking victims that are filing for T visas, person granted conditional entry, parole into the U.S., person granted withholding of deportation and consolation of removal, and also a person who have been in VAWA, self-addition, who have been subjected to extreme cruelty by a U.S. citizen or a local permanent resident. And so, again, talking about trafficking survivors, so there's two paths for trafficking survivors to have benefits eligibility. One is for children that we talked about, the OTIP child eligibility letter that doesn't require any kind of immigration case. For adults, though, there's also an OTIP letter that you can get, but in order to get it, a survivor would need to file a T visa application with the Department of Homeland Security and then receive either an approval or a bona fide determination in the T visa case. It's also possible that a law enforcement or, so as forensic nurses, you work in teams around, you know, doing SANE exams and with other people in your community. One of your law enforcement partners or law enforcement agency, police or prosecutor that you may work with in the context of rape exams or in your work generally in your communities, state and local government officials and federal officials can request that a trafficking victim be granted continued presence, which gives them also this child or adult eligibility letter. So it's really important, again, to think about, like to develop relationships with state and local law enforcement to be able to help out in trafficking victim cases with continued presence in particular. Here we have a partial list of the federal public benefits and community programs that are open to all qualified immigrants. And this is also a list of the benefits that we have on our public benefits map. So if you want to know if an immigrant is qualified for one of these public benefits, you can check the map. So now we're going to go in more deeply to several of the different kinds of public benefits that immigrant victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, child abuse, and human trafficking are eligible for with a bit more detail. So, a poll for you. Which of the following immigrant survivors of domestic or sexual violence or stalking is not eligible for public and assisted housing? Lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylum recipients, violent substitution applicants, new visa applicants and recipients, better spouse waiver applicants, or T-Visa bona fide recipients. Feel free to... So we have a divided answer here. We're only 15% so far, so. Yeah. Up to about 30%. Give me another minute or so. Great, it looks like some of you are changing your minds. So that's about 50%. So I'm going to end the poll and share the results. So, about 21% of you said lawful permanent residents aren't eligible and similar amounts said refugees and asylees. Only a very few of you said VAWAs, better spouse waivers and fewer T-Visas. The correct answer is U-Visas. Everybody else, everybody else on this list is eligible for public and assisted housing. So it means they can get on the public housing list. I know in some communities that list is long, but you want to put an immigrant survivor on that list as soon as possible. So that ideally by the time they get to their name, they get to the top of that list, they have an immigration benefit that gives them access at the same time. It takes some time, as you saw earlier, to process the cases. Those two tracks can run at the same time. It's what they have on the day they reach the top of the line that matters. If they're filing for VAWA or T-Visa or, you know, VAWA, T-Visa mainly or even SIJS children, they should put their name, they should put themselves on the public housing list. But U-Visas will have to wait 20 years or so to get housing. Don't stop. So now the good news is there are forms of, so in addition to, so shelter and transitional housing, as we discussed in the first webinar, is open to all immigrants without regard to immigration status. In addition, low income tax credit housing is available to any victim without regard to immigration status and you can look up in your community apartments that are part of this program. There's a great tool called VAWA Home and you can look it up on the map and clients can use this themselves to find housing that they'd be eligible for. So. Sorry about this. I'm going to click through. There we go. So the programs that, so once a victim begins, is a VAWA self petitioner, for example, or a T-Visa applicant, or a child who got special immigrant juvenile status, got their green card through the special immigrant juvenile status program. These people will be eligible for what they call section 214 public and assisted housing, which is this list of housing programs. And again, this is in addition to shelter and transitional housing that everybody's eligible for. So housing programs run by HUD and housing programs, and you can have these lists for your reference, run by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Programs. People, again, who are eligible for these housing programs include that list that Rafaela showed you earlier of people who, you know, including VAWA self petitioners and trafficking victims. The people you'll see most likely are citizens, lawful permanent residents, VAWA self petitioners, refugees, asylees, and trafficking victims. If any of you are encountering Afghan or Ukrainian refugees, they're also eligible because they're eligible as persons granting parole. This is a list, again, for your reference that you can use of all the programs that don't have any immigrant restrictions. So there's a lot of different housing programs funded by HUD, by OVW, and by HHS that don't have restrictions, and this is what that list is. It's important when you're talking about access to public housing for immigrant survivors to be, you know, to be prepared, as we discussed early, to advocate because, again, this is an area where survivors can get turned away. And as to housing and benefits eligibility generally, there's also an additional category of victims who are qualified, and those are people who are spouses and children of U.S. citizens where the abusive spouse or child, spouse or parent filed a family-based visa petition, and that person has subsequently been abused. And so they can also qualify for these benefits. So when we talk about the various kinds of public benefits that immigrants are eligible for, what happens is, is that under federal law, there is a five-year bar imposed for federal means-tested public benefits, which is TANF, Medicaid, TANF-funded childcare, SSI, and food stamps. Those programs have the least, most restrictions, and generally have a five-year bar. There are certain immigrants that are exempt from the five-year bar, and here you're seeing asylees, refugees, and trafficking victims are the main ones. So this is an area where, this is why trafficking, identifying trafficking is so important when you're talking from a public benefits perspective for a sexual assaults crime. And so as Rafaela discussed earlier, states have an option to provide more benefits or less benefits to immigrants in their state. They can do either, they have to pass a law that says, they have to put a law in place that either grants more or restricts. Many states offer more access during the five-year bar period to many different benefits. I'm going to walk you through that. But what benefits somebody gets varies by state, by type of benefit, and by when they enter the United States. And so our map, our benefits map that we previewed in detail during the last webinar, you can use to not only look up your state, but look up a neighboring state that a client may move to. So you may have someone, or you might have somebody who is a victim of sexual assault. Let's take an immigrant student on campus, right, who might be a victim of sexual assault in your community because you're near the university, or part of the university, but they have family in another state. And so it allows you to use our map to compare the two states, figuring out what that client needs and which state is going to be better for them from a public benefits perspective, which should be part of the equation with safety planning with victims. The benefits programs that are most restricted are federal means-tested public benefits. So it's Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program, Food Stamps, TANF, and SSL. Generally speaking, so some of you will be working with people in their 30s-ish, right, roughly, 27 to 30, over 27 years old, who may have entered the United States as children, quite young. And if they were here when they were young and they've been here since 1996, they're going to have much more access than somebody who first entered the United States after that. So it's just important that you shouldn't assume nobody you'll be working with, unless they're very old, will be eligible, will have entered the United States before August 22, 1996. It could be anybody who's over 27 years old, if I got my math right. I think it's 27. 27, 28, something like that. So you want to think about, you know, when people entered, because not everybody you're going to encounter in a sexual assault program will be somebody who's newly arrived in the United States who's foreign-born. Okay. So, in terms of health care subsidies, which is where I'm going next, anybody who entered prior to August 22, 1996 is directly eligible for health care subsidies under federal law in every state. There's a five-year bar unless it's state-funded for everyone else. Most of the time, most states provide health care subsidies to two groups of people, primarily. If they provide them to immigrants at all. They provide them to under 18-year-old children, up to 18-year-old children, and pregnant women. Or they provide prenatal care. Those are the areas where most states, the largest number of states have elected to provide state funded healthcare subsidies. Adult healthcare is only offered in some states to battered women and during the five-year bar, adult healthcare may be offered to what they call qualified immigrants by other states as well, but it's less available except for pregnant women or pregnant persons generally. So you think, you know, one would think that if somebody had money, they could purchase healthcare on the exchanges in our states or through the federal exchanges. And the point is, is one of the benefits immigrants get as they begin the process of applying for immigration relief, is it turns out you can't even, even if you have money and you could afford it, you can't purchase healthcare on the exchange unless you're an immigrant who is what's considered lawfully present. And so the process of applying for the forms of immigration relief that we were talking about earlier in this webinar leads to lawful presence and it leads people to be able to purchase healthcare on the exchange and secondly, to be able to get subsidies. So when we, this is a chart that shows you what states look like in terms of who gets healthcare subsidies. As you can see, trafficking victims, asylees and refugees get it everywhere. So if you can identify somebody as a trafficking victim, they will be able to get subsidized healthcare regardless of whether a child or an adult. In three additional states, it's actually, no, three additional states, all qualified immigrants. So all the people on that list, Rafael and I were showing you, of people who are lawful permanent residents, people who are involved with self petitioners, people who are trafficking victims, SIJS children who have, who have, who get their green cards are eligible in California, Massachusetts, and New York. Abused qualified immigrants are eligible in Illinois and New Mexico. There are 35 states though, that give children access to health, subsidized healthcare during that five-year waiting period. And four more states give it to all immigrant children. So, and then there's 23 states where lawfully present pregnant women get full healthcare and another eight states, 18 states where they get prenatal care and four states where people, any immigrant who's filed an immigration application with DHS gets subsidized healthcare. So this is what it looks like and our map can help you look it up state by state. In terms of food stamp access, qualified immigrant children, so as soon as a child files for a T visa, and as soon as a child gets a T visa, has filed a VAWA self-petition and gets a prima facie determination, or has gotten lawful permanent residency through let's say the special immigrant juvenile status program, a T visa or VAWA, they will be eligible for food stamps. Adults have a five-year bar unless the state funds it. And there are many fewer states that fund subsidized food stamps than as you saw, like the healthcare chart was full, I ran out of space. The number of states that give anybody but trafficking victims who are immigrants access to food stamps is relatively small. But you'll notice that U visa applicants can get it in California, Illinois, Maine, if they're over 50 years old in Minnesota and in Washington state. So, TANF and TANF funded childcare go together. You'll see again, there's many more states that offer state funded TANF to people, immigrants applying for various forms of immigration relief than food stamps, but it's still much more limited than healthcare. So, TANF and TANF funded childcare is much more limited than healthcare. Again, trafficking victims get it in all states, qualified immigrants in 14 states and abused qualified immigrants in six additional states. And qualified immigrants are VAWA self petitioners and lawful permanent residents who have SIJ or U visas. Now, U visas, as we said, it's gonna take more than two decades to get lawful permanent residency. And that in three states, SIJ applicants and U visa bona fide applicants because they're lawfully present will get TANF, that's Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. And in four states, California, Maine, Pennsylvania and New York, people who file any of these forms of immigration relief can get them as what we call persons residing under color of law, which is what FRUCAL stands for. What's good to know is that there's another form of federally subsidized childcare that doesn't have the same restrictions. So immigrants can get childcare for their children and immigrant children can get childcare if it's related to an educational benefit. And this is widely, and that social security numbers and things like that are not required. So you wanna check, work with clients to check whether they're eligible for childcare development funded childcare. So in federal TANF funded childcare, the groups that generally get it are going to be qualified immigrants who entered before August 22nd, 1996, immigrants after the five-year bar and refugees, asylees and trafficking victims generally are the biggest groups. Those of you that are working in areas near military bases may also see spouses and children and military members who may be eligible. Okay, so let's do a poll. DHS requires universities to ask about the immigration status of applicants or enrolling students. Is it true or false? Okay, so we have 40% that answered. We are waiting for a few more answers and then we can close the poll. Okay, so 69% believe that immigrants Okay, so 69% believe that it's true that DHS requires universities to ask about immigration status of applicants or enrolling students. It's actually false. So we have the results here, 69% and 31% think it's false. It's actually false. The DHS do not require universities to ask about immigration status of applicants. When they are only enrolling for school, for the university. It's different if they are applying for student federal loans or student loans, then they are required to answer the questions about immigration status. So if they are not applying for student loans, universities are not required to ask about immigration status. This is different if they are applying for federal student loans. This is also different if they are applying, for example, as international students or the university is sponsoring their visa. And then it's a different discussion. But only for applying or enrolling universities, DHS do not require university to ask about immigration status. So who can access federal student loans or file a self petitioner than their children, permanent residents, including SIJs, and trafficking victims, refugees, and SIJ recipients that receive local permanent residency. It's basically qualified immigrants that can apply for federal student loans. For post-secondary educational grants and loans, file a self petitioner than their children qualified to receive DOE funded grants and loans. The university, they are required to accept the DHS decision and the documentation that they have applied for file a self petitioner or cancellation of status. When applying for the FAFSA, you can check the eligible non-citizen to apply as a file a self petitioner to this grants and loans. Do you wanna complement anything here? Yeah, and that they can provide their e-number, which is their immigration case file number. If any number is requested, they don't have, because they won't have social security numbers necessarily, but they will have an e-number. I know, yes. So we wanna know from you, have you worked with immigrants, with clients who do not have which of the following identification documents? A, passport, B, driver's license, C, government issue identification cards versus certificate or all of the above. Oh, and this is, I think we changed, this is all that apply. So you can actually answer more than one. Based on your experience. Based on, yeah. Mm-hmm. So yeah, a lot of people already answered, passport, driver's license, IDs, birth certificates. So basically all of the above. About 40% of you have answered so far. But it does look like, showing results, that people, a lot of people report that victims don't have passports, driver's license, any of this ID, the different kinds of IDs. So it's very interesting. I basically, it looks like we have a little time. So I wanna tell you a story. I mean, we got a call from, I think it was somebody working in New Orleans. And the, what was happening is one of the local healthcare programs was basically saying they couldn't provide healthcare prenatal care to immigrant survivors who didn't have identification. And it turns out that's not legally correct. That nobody, like if it's a public health program funded by HHS, any of the public health clinics, public and migrant rural health clinics, any of them in cities and in rural communities are required to be able to provide healthcare without regard to immigration status. And they shouldn't be asking for IDs. But the problem was that sometimes, in this case, it turned out that some immigrants, when they crossed the border, border patrol took their passports as a way of making sure they show up in immigration court. And so this idea of how do you get, like when can somebody get a federally recognized ID is it can be a really important point for immigrant survivors. And it's important to understand that you can work creatively with a victim to help them get on a path for an ID, get on a path for a tax identification number or something so that it will minimize the number of circumstances they can run into where not having an ID could create essentially a false barrier to something that they're eligible to receive. Back to you, Ruffo. Yeah, so the federally recognized driver's license, what we call now the REAL ID, they are federal public benefits. So they have restrictions for immigrants to access. So TBs, who can access this federally recognized driver's license are the TBs as bona fide, continual presence, and immigrants from the moment that they receive authorization. So approved by our substitutioners, SIJ and DACA, bona fide and waiting list approved new visa victims. This would be like four to five years after the application. And local permanent residents can also apply for the REAL ID. However, you have states that provide driver's license that are not part of the REAL ID Act and have different requirements for that. So for example, we have here that 20 states have state issue licensal IDs. One of these licenses, for example, and we can talk this later, is for example, Maryland, where you need to submit a few different types of identification to apply for a driver's license. And one of this being, or that you submitted taxes. So here, so upon receiving work authorization, all the states, DC and Puerto Rico, you can have a driver's license, apply for a driver's license. Also follow approved cases with different actions up to two years. If people who are on bona fide or waiting list approved, it's up to five years. And as I mentioned, you have state issue license and IDs in 20 states who have different requirements to apply for that. And up to VAWA prima facie, it's also Maine. This is Maine, right? Yeah, it's great. So if you're talking about domestic violence victims who are abused by their US citizen or lawful permanent resident spouses or parents, it's good to know that, like, if you're in Maine, I wish more states did this, but if you're in Maine, they get, VAWA prima facie means they get a state driver's license three months after they file their VAWA application. So it's really quick. So another poll for you is like, have you helped a client obtain any of the following documents? And you can check all that apply. And I-10 means individual tax identification number. Number, mm-hmm. B, an on-board social security number, a C, a passport, or D, a driver's license or a government ID. Maine. Yeah, it looks like about 20, yeah. Okay. So it looks like 28% of you have helped get one of these for people. Great. Someone asked, like, what is an on-board social security number? We are going to talk about that in a few seconds. Okay. I think so. I actually know, but you can answer. Let's say we don't have a slide for that. So let me, you want to take care of the poll and I'll answer? Okay. So a non-work social security number. So you remember a little while ago, I was talking, for example, about housing. So what happens is for VAWA self-petitioners and trafficking victims, they're eligible for housing. VAWA self-petitioners are eligible as soon as they file. So they can file for public and assisted housing and get the benefit. But in order to have housing, you have to have a social security number, have the housing benefit. So there's a process by which you can get what's called the non-work authorized social security number. And that's, it's basically a social security number you can use that's required either for federal or state public benefits purposes. So I don't know if we have anybody on this chat, on this participation list from Washington state, but Washington state, as you might've noticed when we were going through, is a state that provides access to subsidized healthcare and access to TANF, a couple of things like that. And on the TANF, like housing, a social security number is required. So if there's state funded TANF in your state, the victim will have to get a non-work social security number to be able to apply, to keep that benefit or apply for that benefit. It's to be able to keep public and assisted housing is a way to do it. So it's when it's required for a benefit that the immigrant is otherwise eligible for. I hope I've made it clear on that. I think so. So let's talk a little bit about the individual taxpayer identification number as we call the ITIN. So I think we are talking about this because we wanna encourage advocates to encourage victims and survivors to submit taxes to IRS. And this is for different reasons. So as I mentioned, for example, as an example, Maryland, we require two years of submitted taxes and an ITIN number to apply for a driver's license in the state of Maryland. Also, if you apply for an ITIN and you submitted taxes, this is also a good evidence of good moral character for immigration applications when you need to submit it, for example, for a lawful permanent residency. That also you can use tax returns to document the work and the history and the physical presence of survivors in the US for future immigration applications. It's also important because everyone should comply to federal tax laws. And even regardless actually of the immigration status, everyone should be a part if they are working and receiving money in the United States, they should be submitting and paying taxes. But also, as I mentioned, help to secure a driver's license. And also it helps with other things in life, for example, opening a bank account and also to submit actually for some of federal public benefits as well. So if I can jump in here for a second, what I think is really important to understand is, I mean, sometimes immigration law and public benefits law and how they intersect doesn't make, theoretically or arguably doesn't make any sense. So for example, these tax ID numbers are set up so that people who are working unlawfully in the United States can pay taxes. So why would the government do that? Because they want the tax money. And because every immigrant who ultimately applies for lawful permanent resident, every immigrant who ends up with a path to a green card, lawful permanent residency, needs to show that as Rafaela said, they're a good person of good moral character. And one of the ways to show you're a good person of good moral character is show that if you were earning money in the United States, you were paying your taxes. And essentially there becomes a point in the immigration case where if they don't have an ITIN number and didn't pay taxes, they have to pay like all those back taxes in order to get a green card or citizenship. And so although they don't have legal permission necessarily to work, if they are working, it's always better to have an ITIN number because in the end it will help them with their immigration case and it has all these other benefits. And it's a very underutilized tool that can be super helpful to immigrant survivors. We have a slide here just how to apply for ITIN for your assistance. But you apply for ITIN when you're applying for your taxes return as well. So true or false? Receiving public benefits can harm an immigrant's victim ability to obtain legal immigration status. Is it true or false? About 40% in. A couple more votes. I think we're at 40. Okay, 52. Good. Can you show the poll? Okay, so 67% answer false and it is false. We want to talk to you a little bit about something that a lot of people are worried about, which is the public charge. And since we are talking here about immigrant survivors, we are talking about people who are victims of crime, who are potentially applying and applying for this immigration option, that's vial substitution or vial constellation of removal. They're applying for new visas. They're applying for two visas. All of this list that is in front of you are lists of status that are exempt from public charge. So if you are working with a victim who has applied for one of these immigration options or benefits, they do not need to worry about public charge. Public charge does not apply for their status in the United States. So also for the people, for the ones who doesn't know what is a public charge, public charge is a ground of inadmissibility that refers to an immigrant from obtaining local permanent residency. If she or he became likely to become, if the government understands that you are likely to become a public charge, which means primarily depending on governments of this business. So the public charge determination is based on a lot of documents, and one of them is like the citizen's age, the health, the family status, the financial situation of the immigrant survivors, an update of their support, and whether the person themselves and not a family member have received or are receiving this following public benefits, which is SISI, Supplemental Security Income, cash assistance for income amendments, which is TANF, the state or local income assistance called general assistance, or long-term institutionalization at the government expense. So public charge only applies for immigrants who are receiving one of these three, four public benefits. Other public benefits are excluded from public charge determination, and the examples are food stamps, nutritional assistance, CHIP, Medicaid, Medicare, public and assisted housing, educational grants and loans. If an immigrant is applying for this or are receiving this, these benefits, they do not, they do not, they do not a part of the public charge determination, and this would not interfere on their application for local permanent residency. And basically what it means is if you're working with a victim, you don't have to worry about all of this. Only the second slide that Rafaela was describing would only apply to like other family members that they might have questions about, but the immigrant isn't going to have this problem. And Rafaela, do you mind if I just kind of take it? In closing, we want to tell you that we have a materials list we shared in the chat. We're going to send it to you as well by email that has all of our links. The directory is working. I double checked it and put it in the chat. It has the public benefits maps and all kinds of tools for you so that you can, you don't have to remember all this in your head. It's too much that to do, but you can look it up based on the client that you're working with, and you can share this information with the victim advocates you're working with. We also have multilingual know your rights materials that might be useful to some of your clients. And we are available for technical assistance. And any of you could call us if you're working on a case and you want to help somebody apply for or figure out what benefits she or their children are eligible for, and then help them apply. We can walk you through that process using our training tools and materials. So I think we're going to turn it back over to safety. Hi, thank you again, Raffaella and Leslie for that. And again, we're going to wrap up and today's webinar is being hosted by the International Association of Forensic Nurses technical assistance grant. And through that grant, IAFN has set up the SAFE TA website that houses various educational opportunities, resources, and national guiding documents. You can, you can contact IAFN with your request for technical assistance by calling the TA line at 1-877-879-7278. You can also visit safetya.org to submit a request form online. To do so click on the request TA button on the SAFE TA website, web page. Next slide. You can continue learning about the upcoming webinars that we have visiting safetya.org slash events to learn more and to register today. Next slide. And again, thank you, Leslie and Raffaella for being with us today. And thank you all for joining us. Please remember to complete the webinar post evaluation. You will receive it via email shortly after this webinar concludes. And we are looking forward to connecting with you all in the near future. And we hope you all have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Brianne also put it on the chat, the link to the evaluation. It makes it easier for all of you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for inviting us, Brianne. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And thanks to NCJFCJ for all their support as well. Always, as always. Thank you so much.

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immigrant survivors

sexual violence

domestic violence

advocates

attorneys

system navigation

immigration relief

trafficking victims

U-visa victims

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