How about some good news on immigration?

Although the national news is not so great these days, the people really on the front lines of the immigration debate tend to get little notice. These are the school teachers, county health officials, local police officers, and other everyday public servants. In North Carolina, the Building Integrated Communities program helps communities develop practical, locally relevant ways to integrated immigrants and improve everyone’s quality of life. You can read BIC’s action plans for seven North Carolina communities here.

This article is the first of a series of articles that will report on BIC’s activities in Siler City, NC. In Siler City, the local steering committee guiding BIC’s work chose youth mental health as a key area of concern. This places the Siler City team at the forefront of addressing a pressing public health concern. Psychological distress among undocumented immigrants is increasingly receiving attention in the research community. In Siler City, we see undocumented parents raising their children with the threat of deportation ever present. Children born in the United States and living with this fear attend school alongside children whose own migration has created trauma of its own. Creating healthy communities means attending to the collective effects of these injuries.