The translation to the name of this resilience interventions is "Always Forward, Never Back" and the acronym SANA-- means HEAL.
This intervention focus on building resilience within the Hispanic/Latino immigrant population in Immokalee, Florida of all ages. The rural town of Immokalee in South West Florida may look small, but it houses more than 20,000 farmworkers (Flocks, 2020). The farmworkers range in all ages, and many travel with their families. This community is also known to have low-income and are both a mix of document and undocumented immigrants, making them an extremely vulnerable population.
I chose to help this population through building a multilevel resilience intervention, because this population lives in constant fear, as they have experienced pre-migration trauma that can develop adverse psychological outcomes (Sangalang et al., 2018). Immigrants leave family and entire life to begin a new one in a strange place where they do not know anyone or even understand the language. Immigrants and the population in this community may also experience post-migration trauma. Even though many immigrants travel to the United States in search for the American Dream and to build a better life or future for their families, they begin to face new traumatic challenges as they deal with discrimination, acculturative stress, and family conflict, increasing distress (Sangalang et al., 2018).
The Hispanic/Latino immigrant population in Immokalee, especially the undocumented immigrants have a history of being enslaved, abused physically and mentally, threatened and even killed as they are taken advantage of (Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 2018), due to their vulnerability of being undocumented, not speaking English to protect themselves, fearing deportation and not understanding their constitutional rights.
Another important reason to build resilience and support for the Immokalee Hispanic/Latino immigrant population is their fear to call on those that have vowed to protect and do no harm, as the police department of Collier County has entered an agreement known as 287(g) with Immigration Customs Enforcement or ICE (Wong, 2012). An agreement that allows local authorities to be trained by ICE to perform immigration law enforcement functions, creating panic and making immigrant families live in constant fear and decreasing levels of trust in authority and emergency support systems.
My intervention focuses on the 5 pillars of resilience building (1) Self Awareness, (2) Mindfulness, (3) Self Care (4) Positive Relationships (4) Purpose.
At the individual level, the intervention will assist with creating self awareness by creating a systematic screening for trauma and related psychiatric disorders that are relevant to the immigrant population in order to more accurately assess ACES and trauma experiences. It will Include questions on perceptions of, immigration status, separation anxieties, and challenges in language varies. Then tailored workshops will be developed to promote mindfulness of ACEs and teach healthy strategies to cope with trauma. As a form of self care at the individual level, the intervention will promote learning English as a self-care mechanisms to thrive personally and professionally. Resources that encourage an individual to seek help if they encounter adversities will also be created.
At the relationship level, the intervention will combat separation of families. This intervention will train peers supporters with similar experiences to be trauma-informed and develop support groups in the Immokalee immigrant community. These peer supporters will also help to connect immigrants with their families via phone calls or videoconference.
At the community level, there will be constant community outreach done by partnered organization to support immigrant workers needs, which include partnering with food banks to reduce food insecurity stressors. Various resource sites will also be implemented within the community, including a mobile clinic with mental health counselors to support families in distress or who fear going to the doctor or calling for help due to their immigration status.
While at societal level, passionate SANA members will advocate and help the immokalee community advocate find their voice to fight for the implementation of policies that protect immigrants (regardless of legal status), help to secure more sanitary housing and protections (especially in a time of COVID) to address the social and spatial inequalities that have continuously made farmworkers vulnerable. We will advocate for policies that continue discontinue the separation of families to decrease post-immigration traumatic experiences, allow for fair wages, and discontinue the partnership of police departments with ICE so that they provide due diligence to “serve and protect” to decrease racial profiling, discrimination, and levels of fear for the community to seek help, as these types of partnerships create large stressors and inequities.
References:
Anti-Slavery program. Coalition of Immokalee Workers. (2018, October 24). https://ciw-online.org/slavery/.
Flocks, J. (2020). The Potential Impact of COVID-19 on H-2A Agricultural Workers. Journal of Agromedicine, 25(4), 367–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/1059924x.2020.1814922
Li, M. (2015). Pre-migration trauma and POST-MIGRATION Stressors for Asian and Latino American Immigrants: Transnational Stress Proliferation. Social Indicators Research, 129(1), 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1090-7
Sangalang, C. C., Becerra, D., Mitchell, F. M., Lechuga-Peña, S., Lopez, K., & Kim, I. (2018). Trauma, post-migration stress, and mental Health: A comparative analysis of refugees and immigrants in the United States. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 21(5), 909–919. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-018-0826-2
Szapocznik José, & Amaro, H. (1995). A Hispanic/Latino family approach to substance abuse prevention. U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.
Wong, T. K. (2012). 287(g) and the Politics of Interior Immigration Control in the United States: Explaining Local Cooperation with Federal Immigration Authorities. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38(5), 737-756. doi:10.1080/1369183x.2012.667983
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