Over 70 million people are displaced around the world because of violence, war and persecution – the greatest displacement in history^₁. As Jews, we live by the value of Tikkun Olam – the repair of the world – and talk frequently of the importance of welcoming the stranger. We have a unique responsibility to support refugees and asylum seekers and raise our voices in opposition to the negative rhetoric and policy changes that we are bearing witness to today.

We at JCFS Chicago cannot overstate our absolute condemnation of this practice. We are calling for confirmation that the cessation of any further separation is in place unconditionally, and for the immediate reunification of all children who have already been separated.

Jessica Schaffer, Director of HIAS Chicago, recently attended an immigration action rally led by JCUA and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights at Federal Plaza. The rally was in support of immigration reform, specifically asking legislators to pass permanent solutions for DACA and TPS recipients.

By David Rupp, Social Work Graduate Student and Intern, JCFS Chicago

The 2020/2021 HIAS Immigration & Citizenship College Scholarship Program is officially live! Applications are available to download through the submission deadline of February 1, 2020.

For over a decade, HIAS Immigration & Citizenship has had the honor of providing scholarships for Jewish students whose lives have been touched by our organization directly, or through their parents or grandparents.

by Jessica Schaffer, Director of HIAS Immigration & Citizenship

In 1949, my grandparents, like so many thousands of Jews at the time, arrived in Canada as refugees. They had survived the ghettos and concentrations camps of Poland and Germany and were grateful for the opportunity to build a new, quiet life in a welcoming community. With them was my mother, only two years old at the time. Though she didn’t know the same horrors as my grandparents, she did know the feeling of containment in the Bergen Belsen Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, in which she was born and spent the first years of her life. For her, my grandparents wished a bright, safe future. They wanted her to grow roots in a country that accepted her and that she could call home.