National Coalition for Literacy Submits Immigration Policy Principles to the White House Task Force on New Americans
Last week, the National Coalition for Literacy submitted its immigration policy principles to the White House Task Force on New Americans, a new inter-agency group created by Presidential Memorandum in November of 2014.
NCL recommendations regarding immigration reform emphasize:
- Leveraging the existing Adult Education and Family Literacy system, provided by Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
- Increasing resources to that system: the infrastructure of the system can handle the increase in services but it needs new resources to address the demand that will inevitably result from executive or legislative action on immigration
- Wrap-around services: successful adult education programs working with immigrants should also have the resources to provide wrap‐around services, such as child care, transportation, and other wrap‐around services
- The importance of basing any English language proficiency requirement on research and evidence‐based practice
- Using and expanding family literacy or two-generation program models: a two‐generation approach is a short‐term solution in the path to learn English and a long‐term solution in the success of the next generation.