RICHMOND, Va. -- Like any Virginia mother, you can hear and see the worry in Maria Lopez when she talks about the challenges facing her family, especially her children.
Originally from Guatemala, Lopez added her voice to a group of Virginians and advocates pushing to protect immigrant populations in the Commonwealth.
"I work to support my children and even with that we are not able to afford to pay the rent," Lopez said, with obvious emotion, through a translator.
During the first few days of the legislative session in Virginia, very little actual debate or voting takes place, as leaders sort out the logistics moving forward.
It gives advocacy groups a chance to vocalize their priorities to Virginia lawmakers.
The Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights (VACIR) joined several partner organizations at a press conference Thursday to lay out their agenda, which addresses issues in housing, education, and labor affecting tens of thousands of immigrants living in Virginia.
"We are hard-working people and contribute to the well-being and development of the state," Evelin Idalia Valladares, who lives in Northern Virginia, said through a translator.
Affordable housing and tenant protections were chief among the group's priorities.
Rising housing costs impact Virginians of all backgrounds, but advocates said the financial strain of housing costs only accelerates situations where landlords take advantage of immigrant communities, particularly the undocumented.
"This leads to people of our community living 10 to 15 people in a two-bedroom house because they do not have the funds to meet those living expenses," Andres de Leon, who lives in Northern Virginia, said through a translator.
The number of students who are learning English as a second language continues to grow in Virginia schools.
Advocates said there are more than 137,000 ELL students in Virginia, but the number of ELL instructors is not keeping pace, they said.
VACIR is backing legislation that would make sure the number of ELL instructors keeps pace with the number of ELL students within a school division and help fund them.
"When we are failing a significant part of our public education students, we are failing as a state," said Freddy Mejia with the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.
"English language learners deserve to be embraced and celebrated for the lived experience and perspective they bring in the classroom," said Emily Moore with Voices for Virginia’s Children.
On top of these issues, advocates are calling for the expansion of health coverage for Virginia children, regardless of immigration status, and the reinstatement of Dreamer scholarships in the biennial budget.
Dreamers, who were born in America to parents who are undocumented, get in-state tuition to Virginia colleges and universities if they graduate from Virginia K-12 schools, but during the last budget, $10 million in scholarship funding for those students was funneled elsewhere.
"Everyone in Virginia should have equal access to education, to healthcare, and to housing," said Sheila Herlihy Hennessee with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy.
Advocates said the continued growth of the immigrant community makes these issues all the more pressing.
"Nationally, we’ve gone from the 10th largest immigrant population in the United States to the 9th largest. So we have a diverse, growing population, and the Commonwealth would not be the Commonwealth without the diversity of immigrants here," Monica Sarmiento, the executive director of VACIR, said
Advocates will continue to lobby state lawmakers over the next two months of session.
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