(applause) >> good morning, everyone. we're going to get started now. thank you for attending today's announcement. my name is adrian, i'm with immigrant affairs. let me first start by introducing the other partners

for today's initiative lunch. first of all, the san francisco foundation, dr. sandra hernandez and tessa rivera, [speaker not understood], senior program officer for immigrant rights and integration, walter and alise fund, also known as the haase senior fund. pam david, the wallace alexander gabode foundation, stacey ma and thomas, concerned with immigrants and refugees represented today by felicia barto, deputy director. also present today are commissioner canali vice-chair of the san francisco immigrant rights commission, city librarian, luis herrera, [speaker not understood], and clementine of the african advocacy network.

so, let me provide first of all just a little bit of background on the initiative. in 2008 while serving as city administrator, mayor ed lee created the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs, one of the first such offices in the nation. the intention was to better communicate with and engage our city residents while providing opportunities for meaningful participation and particularly for under served and vulnerable communities. in 2009 the city had the pleasure of collaborating with business community and philanthropic partners for the 2010 census count. we learned a lot about applying relevant street wise, street smart approaches to outreach and supporting community stewardship. this successful outreach effort and ongoing relationship evolved into a new model of engagement and collaboration. last year under the leadther ship of mayor ed lee and dr. sandra hernandez of the san francisco foundation, ~

planning began on a city-wide citizenship initiative, a total of five philanthropic foundations, a national grant makers organization, and trusted community partners are working together with the city on this effort. we will be starting the pilot phase of the initiative after today's announcement. we hope to include more partners as the initiatives progresses into full implementation over the next three years. so, mayor lee will now announce the initiative. and as a long-time civil rights champion and leader, mayor lee has infused san francisco's city government with a new sense of inclusive collaborative leadership effectiveness and boundless energy, creative innovation and energy. so, mayor lee. (applause) >> thank you, adrian. i don't know about boundless energy. [laughter]

>> but i do -- i am inspired by our immigrant community. we've done so much that i think the city is -- its dna is really about our diversity. let me thank adrian. she's been a wonderful leader at the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs, leading an effort not just with the immigrant rights commission, but a good strong relationship with our community-based organizations that do all of the great on the groundwork with our immigrant families, people who are coming here as refugees, adjusting, people who come here, permanent residents, people who have come here seeking their future, their hopes for themselves and their families. also people who often came here by different ways and stayed, and maybe overstayed their status, or are escaping from

war-torn or impoverished countries. we will be a sanctuary city for many years for people who want to be here. having said that, i am glad to be here this morning with adrian, dr. hernandez, and also, again, teaming up with board president and supervisor david chiu who i got a chance to work with very early as we prepared back in 2010 with all the community groups and with the board of supervisors. and then i was the city administrator tasked by the mayor and the board with this big challenge of how do we go about of the census, knowing that every census in past history and those brief partial census efforts that go on in between the 10 years always under counted our folks and people who have been here. all the groups that i just described and the folks that we

have tried to serve and knew that they were living sometimes in the shadow, sometimes without a lot of help and support. how do we count them in as residents of this city? and, so, we began on a very strong outreach program that depended upon service providers, to be quite candid. not just government agencies, but providers that sacrifice much of their time in the nonprofit world, surviving on very, very much foundational grants, foundational leaders who oftentimes were the only ones that heard the voices that we need help to really identify these folks because if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have people coming out and telling us what diseases were causing them problems, what was spreading, what were the fears in our immigrant communities that were preventing them from participating, from not getting licenses, not accessing

themselves to job opportunities, being perhaps caught up in underground economy. and you know what that leads to oftentimes is many problems that also may have challenges in our criminal justice system as well as our economics. but we wanted all of that to change. we for many years kids of immigrants, we always felt it was our duty to take up what maybe our parents and our friends were not able to out of fear or out of the lack of government action or accountability, or even a safety net for people to be able to speak freely. taking all of that immigrant life lessons and now placing them in effect i have culturally competent programs was our task. and, so, back in 2010 we tried to do that, and i think we did very well in the census count by bringing forth so many

groups to be counted and not to be afraid and not to be experiencing consequences. but the census was only the beginning. we knew that. and in our follow-up conversations with dr. hernandez who helped lead a lot of the community-based efforts as well as conversations with foundations and grants, with people like annie chung and others who are community leader, with different ethnicities, and i mean all ethnicities. not just ones that dominate, immigrants in san francisco like asians and latinos, but our african community, our eastern europe committee, our middle eastern communities are all engaged in this effort. and our goal was always beyondv just being counted, how do you participate fully in american society? ~ how do you get to a david chiu as the supervisor or ed lee as the mayor and register your

heart felt viewpoints on how your park should look like? what kind of education level your schools should be in? what kind of community safety plans would make you and your family feel safe? what kind of level of health care, which is a big, big challenge for us these days, that you need in order to keep healthy? all of these kinds of issues, including input in the government, we've always wanted to improve. well, today there is over 100,000 permanent residents in san francisco who are not fully engaged yet in everything that they can be doing in registering their voice. and, so, we want to announce today a new initiative, it's the san francisco pathways to citizenship initiative. its job, its focus is to work with all the community-based organizations in the public-private way, work with the foundations with historically supported these efforts to bring voice and

communication to hidden communities and unannounced communities, and to bring them to a path of citizenship, and to talk in culturally competent ways what the benefits of full citizen participation are, and there are many. if you are becoming a citizen or if you become a citizen, you're going to have a lot more fuller rights. for one thing, you get to vote in san francisco. you get to vote in america. and that voting right is so precious. and we saw just a month ago or less than a month ago how we revisited how valuable that voting rights is, and all the sacrifices that heroes of this country had to protect that right for everybody. we want everybody to enjoy that because that gets you a voice and all the things we initially talked about. we want citizens to have a proper rich orientation and

training classes that will conduct -- that will be conducted through this initiative, nonpartisan voting, the rights to vote, the right to be educated around every ballot measure that we have, whether it costs you more money or it doesn't cost you anything, or how do we improve muni, whether it costs you more or doesn't cost you anything. how do we do all of that in a much more involved way? education, outreach, more engaging new citizens to mentor and help other eligible immigrants navigate the citizenship application process. we think this is our next big challenge, but opportunity just beyond the work that we did which was groundwork to get people counted. and i said earlier, our diversity is not just to be tolerated. it has to be celebrated in every way, and full participation is the goal. well, i want to thank wonderful

historic and new funding partners that through their leadership and generosity in this initiative, certainly sandra hernandez and the san francisco foundation have been long-time partners. she's been so helpful in many other things and many of you know she's helping me on hope s.f., provide housing opportunities for some of our worst dilapidated housing. now she's also again stepped up with additional partners. and i want to just signal to you some of these historic partners that are working with us. the [speaker not understood] foundation, the haase junior and senior foundations, as well as the asian pacific fund amongst many other foundations that are assisting us. this is a $1.2 million initiative over the next three years with the city providing about half of the funding and the foundations stepping up with the other half. but the real work is going to be done at the community level.

the community organizations that are going to be working with us on numerous and they reflect all the different ethnicities that i just mentioned. but i want to mention a few to give them some special thank you because they're stepping beyond what they've traditionally done and going into the mold of going beyond just the citizenship count and now into services into this new orientation and training, and that is [speaker not understood] for the elderly, one of the lead agency. thank you, annie, for leading that. you've been a wonderful collaborater with us. the asian caucus, asian pacific islander outreach, catholic charities cyo, international institute of the bay area, jewish family and children services, [speaker not understood] community resource center. as well as the african advocacy network, the arab resource organizing center, myob which is the [speaker not

understood], the southeast asian community center, [speaker not understood] media, of course san francisco immigrant rights commission. well, i've often said in many speeches that our immigrant population is important. well, over a third of our population are immigrants and we acknowledge that. but i don't just want to say it as an announcement. everybody knows that. what we want is full participation. we want people to not be afraid or not be meeting as many barriers as they are today, from activating themselves in full participation. and i do want to have people of all languages and all heritages telling us how they want our parks to be managed, how they want community safety, how they want transportation to be had, all these things everybody else gets to do, and they weigh in pretty heavily. but i want full participation of that. and until we get so, we'll always feel we're not

representing everybody in this city. and, so, this effort is to get to the additional 100,000 permanent residents to encourage them to get to the citizenship, enjoy all those benefits. those benefits are numerous. you're going to be able to situate yourself in better jobs. you're going to get qualified for training programs that are only offered sometimes to citizenships. you're going to always obviously we want to improve your language capabilities so that you're able to navigate these employment training programs and all the other engaging programs that we have. san francisco is the innovation capital of the world and in that way all of the different ethnicities that arrive in san francisco of all different backgrounds need to be part of this innovation, because innovation is not about just one particular group of people. it's about everybody participating. and you should hear some of the

tech kids that are in the city who want to hear from the chinese american community, the southeast asian american haunted, the african immigrant community, the latino immigrant community, southeast asian community, all of them, they want to hear how they can innovate technology with everyone else and how they can improve lives ~. technology is there for our use and one of the reasons we support it is it's got to improve our lives for everybody. you cannot improve one's life if you're not communicating with people that speak spanish only. or in the shadows. this is why we're making this announcement. we're also making a timely announcement and adrian is very strategic on this because we are having a national conversation about immigration. we have to pass comprehensive immigration reform in this country. senate has done part of it. (applause)

>> we have to get -- we have to get this agenda today rest of congress, to the house of cogv. it's a big, big challenge. the president, our senators, our leader pelosi, senator feinstein, they're all engaged. we have to push very hard. and i think our voices are going to be that much stronger if we add an additional 100,000 people on our way to citizenship because that's the full circle. and that's why we need immigration reform. we also need to make sure we bring some path of citizenship to all those that are living in the shadows as we have been a sanctuary city. we need everybody to be full participants, and that's what we're doing today. so, again, i want to thank sandra. i want to thank annie, i want to thank all the community groups that are standing behind us, people that we'll work with to help us be the successful city that we always feel we are, but we want to get more out of our citizens than just living and enjoying life here. we have to participate in the fullest way and this is what's

going to make our city even more successful. thank you very much for participating here today. (applause) >> thank you, mayor lee. we would not get all these things done in san francisco without the leadership and support of the san francisco board of supervisors. and supervisor david chiu is a former criminal prosecutor, civil rights, and immigration attorney, technology, entrepreneur, senate judiciary aid, and democratic council. he's done a lot of things in his life. he's also talented and highly effective leader of the san francisco board of supervisors where he has served as president since 2009. president chiu. (applause) >> thank you, and good morning, everyone. first of all, i want to join the mayor in thanking all the folk behind me who represent the funding community that has so wonderfully stepped up. thank you, dr. sandra hernandez

and your colleagues. i of course want to thank all the amazing nonprofit social service providers and immigrant rights organizations that have been part of the fabric of why i'm so proud of san francisco as a city that welcomes and protects our immigrant communities. and i also want to take a moment and thank all of you. you're taking pictures of us because i think behind us represents the diversity of our city. but we are looking at you. if you actually looked among yourselves, this room effects the diversity of the world. san francisco, we were built by immigrants. the presence of our city is successful because of the vitality of our immigrant community. and we know the future of san francisco rests with the future of our immigration and i am grab community. so, i want to thank you for being part of this. ~ immigrant as adrian mentioned in the late 1990s, the first time i set foot in city hall was when i was working as an immigrant rights attorney. working on the fact as you know our immigrants, our noncitizens have incredible challenges in becoming citizens.

not only do they have to wade through immigration codes that are many inches thick. they orphan have to spend a ton of money to pay attorneys as well as immigration fees. not only does our federal government have enormous backlogs when it comes to immigration applications, but it's a very daunting process and this is why as the mayor said, it is so important that we get immigration reform done. in the mid 1990sst i actually worked for the u.s. senate. the last time they passed a so-called immigration reform bill. ~ that immigration bill was a punitive bill. it essentially sent the message to the world that america was not open to immigrants. we need a different message, and this is the message that we need to get out today from san francisco. fast forward to 2010, i was proud at that time to ask mayor gavin newsom to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to make sure we counted all members of our san francisco community. and who did we ask to step up to make sure that money was well spent?

it was then our city administrator now mayor ed lee, adrian and folks behind us who made sure we were counting everyone who was a resident regardless of their citizenship. today we're talking about taking that next step. it's such a wonderful moment to be part of i think the celebration of who we are as a city, to be able to say now that we have gotten everyone here, we need to make sure that we get everyone through the immigration process so that they don't have to ever fear that they are not part of our body fabric, our city fabric, who we are as americans. and, so, i'm delighted to be part of this conversation and i'm delighted to represent a board of supervisors that has stood repeatedly for the idea that regardless of your citizenship you deserve a spot in san francisco. i serve on a board where over half of us are the sons and daughters, the grand sons and granddaughters of immigrants. we have immigrants on our board of supervisors and the last thing i'll jt