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~The Face of Immigration in Tennessee~
Welcome and Warning
Posted July 2004
Welcome to this website on “The
Faces of Immigration in Tennessee.”
A few words of explanation and warning are in order.
This is no longer an active web site. It was created as part of a law
student project carried out in 1999 by students in my class on Community
Partnership Development at the University of Tennessee
College of
Law. Although neither the students nor I have the resources that would be
required to maintain the site as an active and updated source of current
information, I have decided to leave it online, at least for now. There
are three reasons why I believe visitors may find the site of interest,
even though it is no longer being actively maintained or updated.
First, it is a record of innovative student work. In 1999, a number of people
scattered around our state and region were attempting to understand and
respond to the unprecedented increase in the Latino/Latina population in Tennessee. But
the issue was quite new, and this effort represented an early public
statement about it. I am proud of what my students accomplished, and this
site offers a way to let others have access to their efforts. (To see a
web page that I have built in the meantime to display other examples of
my students’ work, please visit http:www.law.utk.edu/library/franweb/default.html)
Second, although some of the more topical information is outdated (and
should not be relied upon!), there are several short essays and more
general observations on the site that remain timely and interesting on
the subject of Latina/Latino immigration in the Southeast and Tennessee. As
I write this Welcome and Warning in July 2004, the demographic changes in
question are even more evident than they were in 1999, but they still
feel new to many of us native-born Tennesseans. Accordingly, the issues
surrounding new immigration in Tennessee are
still very much alive, and the site should be of interest to people
seeking to understand these issues. Third, the site itself provides a
kind of snapshot record regarding the state of Tennessee
immigrant affairs, at least as perceived by my students, at one
particular moment in time. Given the fast rate of change in these
matters, this snapshot moment seems worth preserving as an historical
artifact.
Introduction from students, 1999: In
the spring of 1999, twelve law students at the University of Tennessee signed
up to take a seminar offered by Professor Fran Ansley.
We wanted to find out about the experiences of Latino immigrants with the
legal system here, we hoped to identify any special needs they might have
for legal representation or for education about their legal rights and
responsibilities. We also wanted to find out how the legal profession and
the justice system were or were not responding to these new
circumstances. Finally, we hoped that by the end of the semester we could
actually make a difference in some small but concrete way.
Over the course of the semester we learned a great deal.
We became convinced that Latino immigrants themselves are often hungry
for additional information to help them understand and deal with their
new environment. We also learned that many native-born Tennesseeans want to learn more about their new neighbors, about what brought them here, and about
what they are encountering in the workplace and the community. There are
a number of agencies, organizations, and individuals who are now working
in Tennessee to
serve, reach out to, and organize Latino members of the community. All of
these players have voiced a need for more information and for better
linkages with other people and organizations that are taking up these
issues in Tennessee and
elsewhere.
The web page you are looking at was designed to address
this need. It is one of the concrete steps that our class has taken,
first launched in March 1999, and still a work-in-progress. We hope that
visitors will find that this site provides access to helpful information,
and we welcome your suggestions for additions and changes. To give us
your feedback,  EMAIL
US.
The web page is currently divided into four sections: Legal
Rights and Responsibilities, Fact and Policy, Resources, and Interactive
Forums.
The first section, Legal Rights and
Responsibilities, includes information on Banks and Money,
Consumer Law, Criminal Law, Discrimination, Domestic Violence, Education,
Driver Information, Education, Employment, Family Law, Farmworkers, Health Care, Housing, Immigration,
Language Access, Public Benefits, and Taxes.
A second section, Fact and Policy,
includes
immigration facts and policy information.
A third section, Resources, includes
links and contact information for local, state, and federal immigration
resources.
The web page also includes several Interactive
Forums facilitating a place for individuals interested in
immigration to communicate with one another. Those forums include a page
for Immigrants' Stories, a Chat Room, Message Boards and editorials
for discussion of Hot Topics and Opposing Opinions, and links
to Spanish Audio available on the web.
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