The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, also known as CHIRLA, is a Los Angeles county-based organization focusing on immigrant rights. While the organization did evolve from a local level, it is now recognized at a national level. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles organizes and serves individuals, institutions and coalitions to build power, transform public opinion, and change policies to achieve full human, civil and labor rights. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles also has aided in passing new laws and policies to benefit the immigrant community regardless of documented status.
History
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles is considered to be one of Los Angeles' oldest organizations advocating for immigrant rights. In 1986, the creation of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles or CHIRLA, was funded by the Ford Foundation in efforts to help educate immigrants about the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The Ford Foundation also had hopes of addressing anti-immigrant sentiment that was evolving within the context of immigration debate in the United States of America. Following the funding from the Ford Foundation, CHIRLA was to help undocumented immigrants about the pathway to citizenship while also informing immigrants about their workers' right in the labor force.
CHIRLA was founded in 1986 as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Since its founding, CHIRLA has evolved in three major components. When being founded, the organization focused on issues such as providing immigrants the resources to leadership development, organizing and mobilizing. Another component CHIRLA focused on was focusing on its own programs and committees while also trying to create other organizations that were interested on similar issues as CHIRLA. Resulting in a transition from focusing on immigrant issues at a local level to immigrant issues at a national level. This focus helped the organization with challenging laws that limited workers' rights at a local and national level. Present day, CHIRLA works with different organization around the nation in hopes of influencing future federal legislation.
Following the passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, representatives from Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) now known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, and Dolores Mission and other voluntary agencies and local legal service coalitions formed a steering committee to coordinate the efforts of charities, legal service organizations, and advocacy organizations. The steering committee served the purpose of different organizations and coalitions collectively working towards issues surrounding the immigrant community. The steering committee would also provided more services to serve as many migrants as possible in Los Angeles. By December 1992, CHIRLA acted on its mission of "advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees and to foster an environment of positive human and community relations in our society." Three years later, CHIRLA had brought together about eighty members of the coalition in order to represent and address different issues within the immigrant community.
With the sponsorship of United Way, CHIRLA was formed. In 1993, it was granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status.
In the same year, faced with major changes to laws pertaining to unauthorized immigrants from California Proposition 187, CHIRLA established a hotline, which allowed immigrants to call in with concerns on different subjects, one specific one being Proposition 187. CHIRLA also established the only Spanish-Language hotline in Southern California, allowing undocumented immigrants to voice their concerns about this proposition and attain information on what to do. On the day after the election, November 9, 1994, CHIRLA's hotline reported over 250 calls received that day. In addition, during the 11 months after Proposition 187 was passed, CHIRLA recorded 229 cases of serious rights abuses, 72 of which involved denial of services and discrimination in sectors affected by this proposition, which included schools or health clinics.