Values: Resiliency and Growth, Racial Equity and Belonging, Opportunity, Connection and Cohesion
Vision: Greater Kansas City is welcoming to all.
A welcoming plan is a roadmap that helps identify key priorities. By bringing together the government, business, and nonprofit sectors, we created a roadmap that identifies the programs, policies, and activities needed to accomplish our goals of being an inclusive community.
Welcoming communities actively ensure that residents, including newcomers, fully participate in civic life by increasing access to leadership and democratic spaces.
Goal – Greater Kansas City works to empower racially and ethnically diverse residents with education and access to civic life.
Recommendation: Local community organization and institutions are accessible and processes for engagement are clear
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Recommendation: Neighborhood groups and associations increase inclusion, equity, and belonging.
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Recommendation: Naturalization programs are supported and accessible.
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Recommendation: Barriers to voting are addressed and removed.
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Welcoming communities build connections between newcomers and longer-term residents by strengthening relationships and communicating shared values.
Goal – Greater Kansas City will be a place that purposefully creates, supports, and promotes opportunities for all residents to build trusted relationships with each other.
Recommendations: Organizations are supported I n their efforts and commitment to racial equity, inclusion, and belonging.
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Recommendation: A “connected communities’ group/program” composed of members from diverse sectors develops and promotes opportunities for all residents to learn about and from each other.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City will engage minority-owned busines assistance office to promote immigrant and refugee-owned restaurants.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City is recognized as a welcoming and inclusive community.
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Welcoming communities harness the full potential of all residents. Immigrants have the skills and assets to thrive, and economic development systems are prepared to leverage new and existing talent.
Goal – Greater Kansas City residents are fully able to participate in the economy, and economic development systems are prepared to leverage new and existing talent.
Recommendation: Workforce systems and initiatives support and sustain career pathways for racially and ethnically diverse residents.
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Recommendation: An entrepreneurial ecosystem supports immigrant, refugee, and minority-owned businesses for new business development and growth.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City economic development programs collaborate to create equitable and inclusive economic development for the region.
Recommendation: Regional economic development plans and efforts identify and address immigrant and refugee engagement.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City creates a welcoming and inclusive workplace environment.
Recommendation: Employers, immigrants, refugees, and racially and ethnically diverse residents work together to improve workplace conditions and culture.
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Welcoming communities strive for an educational system that ensures all students have the support they need to succeed in school and the education they need to succeed in the workforce.
Goal – Greater Kansas City commits to prepare and support all students including immigrants and refugees – regardless of immigrant status – for the workplace through all areas of education.
Recommendation: Education opportunities are expanded for young adults, regardless of immigration status, and include those who have aged out of secondary education.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City commits to immigrant integration and economic mobility through education.
Recommendation: Educational opportunities at various literacy and education levels are accessible for working adults.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City commits to creating equitable educational outcomes for racially and ethnically diverse students.
Recommendation: Support racially and ethnically diverse families, including families who do not speak English at home, to actively participate and succeed in the education system.
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Welcoming places work to ensure community services and opportunities are available to all residents, including immigrants.
Goal – Greater Kansas City ensures equitable access for immigrants, refugees, and minority residents to essential services., including healthcare, transportation, housing, legal assistance, places of worship, and government services.
Recommendation: Processes for Safe Space designation are developed and adopted.
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Recommendation: Policies and programs are in place that protect racially and ethnically diverse residents from discrimination and predatory practices.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City, including all local governments, provides meaningful language access.
Recommendation: A language access programs is in place across government agencies, with the goal of expanding to programs, services, and activities.
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In welcoming places, the local government implements systems and programs that strengthen community efforts and embed inclusion within government agencies. Welcoming communities foster trust and build relationships between residents, including newcomers, and local law enforcement and safety agencies.
Goal – Greater Kansas City will work to advance racial justice equity, and inclusion so that everyone – including racially and ethnically diverse residents, immigrants, and refugees – feels safe and welcome.
Recommendations: Locally elected officials and government leaders commit to racial equity, inclusion, and belonging.
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Goal – Local governments in Greater Kansas City adopt policies and practices that promote safe inclusive, and welcoming communities.
Recommendation: Local governments review policies and services to ensure they do not have a disparate impact on or exclude racially and ethnically diverse residents, including immigrants and refugees.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City works to build trust and strengthen relationships between law enforcement and racially and ethnically diverse residents, including immigrants and refugees.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City works to enhance accountability, transparency, and communication within its law enforcement agencies.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City protects resident from deportation.
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Recommendation: Greater Kansas City is prepared for natural disasters and emergencies with strategies to support resilience in racially and ethnically diverse communities.
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Goal – Greater Kansas City creates a welcoming and inclusive climate attractive to racially and ethnically diverse residents.
Recommendations: Identify best practices for local governments to adopt policies that ensure all residents feel welcome.
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This toolkit was created to be a communications resource for those working in the field of immigration and immigrant integration. It provides practical messaging tools and strategies that address people’s fears, anxieties, and prejudices head on.
Bridging Divides, Creating Community: Arts, Culture and Immigration is a creative placemaking field scan written by John C. Arroyo, Ph.D., AICP, in partnership with ArtPlace America.
Empowers black voices through advertisement.
Economic assistance.
Safe job space for Afghan and Myanmar refugees.
Here, Hernández chronicles what her Cuban-Colombian family taught her about love, money, and race while also figuring out what it means to be an American and a woman. Her book is ultimately the story of a daughter who is eager to find herself and find her community while also creating a new, queer life. Moving between English and Spanish, she reflects on the impact of her parents and many of her fears growing up, resulting in a must-read, heartfelt exploration.
Ifemelu and Obinze meet and fall in love as teenagers in Lagos, Nigeria. After graduating, though, both set off for independent journeys in different countries. How will their experience as immigrants change them forever? And when, years later, they meet again, will they be the same people they once were?
Although Arce has a more recent memoir, her journey begins with this one, growing up on the outskirts of San Antonio as an undocumented immigrant while dreaming of professional and financial success. Her honest writing explores the physical, financial, and emotional costs of being a high-achiever while also keeping the secret of her immigration status. Arce paints a picture of the typical undocumented immigrant—the person who could be your next door neighbor or your family down the street. Though her story is incredible, it’s also not unusual—which is part of what makes it an incredible tale.
Looking for a YA book about the immigration experience that will appeal to high schoolers? This National Book Award finalist is about a girl coming to the U.S. from Haiti with her mother. Unexpectedly, her mother is detained, leaving Fabiola to navigate a new country—on her own.
She’s now best known for her roles on Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, but Guerrero has an immigration story of her own. When she was just 14 years old, Guerrero’s parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Remaining in the country (being born in the U.S., she herself was a citizen), she had to rely on the kindness of family friends to survive. In the Country We Love brings to life one extraordinary woman’s resilience in the face of a true nightmare but somehow finds the strength to keep going.
Behold the Dreamers is a modern epic following a Cameroonian couple trying to make it in New York. Their arrival, however, coincides with the Great Recession, making a hard adjustment even more daunting.
Henry Park is a Korean immigrant who spends his life trying to be a native speaker of English; trying to assimilate, essentially, into American culture. Ironically, the more American he becomes, the more alienated he feels from his own self. When he agrees to spy on Korean-American politicians, his own questions of identity are drawn into sharp relief.
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy―two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia―trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
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