Federal Agencies Cooperate on Major New Projects to Strengthen Assimilation

WASHINGTON – Today the Task Force on New Americans introduced four new inter-agency initiatives to help immigrants assimilate. In addition to launching WelcometoUSA.gov, the federal government’s official website for new immigrants, the Task Force today announced three major projects to help legal immigrants embrace the common core of American civic culture, learn English, and fully become American.

"When President Bush formed the Task Force, he did so with a charge to work together to find ways to increase opportunities for new immigrants to learn as much as they can about our Nation's civic values and its rich history,” said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director and Task Force Executive Secretary Emilio González. "We have accomplished a great deal in just one year, but we’re not done, our plans include even more opportunities for American citizens and community groups to help newcomers integrate into American society."

One major priority of the Task Force is to improve access to essential information for new immigrants. WelcometoUSA.gov is a comprehensive web portal leveraging resources from a wide variety of federal agencies to present newcomers with a range of critical information.

Another major initiative, the New Americans Project, seeks to encourage volunteerism among both U.S. citizens and new immigrants. The Task Force will accomplish this through, among other initiatives, a zip-code based search engine listing volunteer opportunities to work with immigrants and a series of outreach events to promote volunteerism. In addition, the New Americans Project aims to provide opportunities for immigrants themselves to integrate into their communities by volunteering.

The Task Force is also providing public libraries, adult educators, volunteers, and others who work with immigrants with better training and increased resources. Two examples are the Civics and Citizenship Toolkit, which contains a variety of educational tools for immigrants and will be distributed for free to public libraries, and a series of web-based and regional training courses for volunteers and adult educators.

For more information about these and other Task Force on New Americans initiatives, please see the Task Force fact sheet now available on the USCIS web site: http://www.uscis.gov. For background on the Task Force, including information about its member agencies, visit http://www.welcometousa.gov/About_us/default.htm.

- USCIS -