Breaking Through the Noise: Raising Awareness Through Public Education

Policy doesn’t get people’s attention easily. Many individuals and families are too busy at work, school or managing households to pay much attention to issues such as naturalization, deportation relief and immigration fraud. In 2016, Hispanic Federation mounted public education campaigns aimed at making Latinos aware of resources available to help them with these three issues. After reaching 700,000 individuals and fielding some 20,000 hotline calls, it’s clear that the three public education campaigns below achieved great impact. Here’s how:

NaturalizeNY Public Education Campaign: In August 2016, Hispanic Federation partnered with Telemundo and with experts at the NY Department of State to design a public education campaign promoting naturalization fee waiver assistance. HF reached over 200,000 viewers, received more than 5,000 calls and helped connect 3,163 likely eligible callers with citizenship fee waiver assistance.

DAPA/DACA+ and DACA Public Education Campaigns: HF hosted two tri-state and one New York Citypublic education campaign regarding President Obama’s Deferred Action initiative. In one event, we paired the campaign with a comprehensive legal screening workshop. In another--in response to the US Supreme Court’s tied decision on DAPA/DACA+--HF leveraged the event with town hall meetings in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The final campaign was the annual tri-state DACA Day of Action, which reached over 400,000 viewers, fielded 2,802 calls, and provided direct services to over 1,371 people. In addition, HF fielded an additional 11,257 immigration-related questions on its Linea Informativa hotline.

Immigration Services Fraud Public Education Campaign: HF partnered with experts to inform NYC’s immigrant community of notario fraud, help them report unscrupulous service providers, and connect them to credible immigration agencies. Through the campaign, we reached over 100,000 viewers, resolved 903 calls, and referred over 300 people to the Department of State fraud line. Due to our campaign, the NYS immigration fraud report line received one-third of their annual number of complaints in one week.