Refugees and Migrants.

The Foundation this year began a major expansion of its work on behalf of refugees and migrants, who currently number some 30 million throughout the world. The work is carried out by three programs—Urban Poverty (see page 7), International Affairs (see page 61), and Human Rights and Social Justice.

Through a combination of research, public education, litigation, and advocacy, the Human Rights and Social Justice program works to clarify the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented aliens and to help ensure that they receive due process and legal protection.

The United States, a magnet for immigrants and refugees from the beginning of its history, is considering major changes in its immigration laws. The changes could, among other things, legalize millions of undocumented aliens already in the country, impose sanctions on employers who hire illegal entrants, and expedite procedures for granting asylum. The proposed revisions have produced intense debate in the Congress and among employers, ethnic organizations, labor unions, and other groups. To help inform this debate and to develop a consensus on complex immigration issues, the Foundation granted $300,000 to the National Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Forum, which is made up of more than 100 national and community-based organizations as well as some 150 individuals concerned about immigration policy and the well-being of aliens in the United States. The forum sponsors national and regional workshops on such topics as the international factors influencing the migration of peoples, publishes a newsletter on the proposed immigration legislation, and reports on the effects of immigration on different U.S. regions. It also collaborates with such organizations as the Foundation-supported Refugee Policy Group, which conducts research on refugee matters.

The Foundation this year also supported several groups that have enlisted the help of volunteer lawyers to represent indigent aliens in their claims to asylum. For example, over the past three years the Political Asylum Project of the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights has arranged for pro bono publico legal representation for some 250 aliens from more than thirty countries, and has trained many young lawyers in the intricacies of immigration law and asylum claims. The project has also worked with other groups in arranging legal assistance that secured the release of 1,800 detained Haitians seeking asylum in the United States. For these and other activities (see page 35), the committee received $300,000.

A grant went to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation to establish a National Fund for Alien and Immigration Rights. The new fund will help to strengthen the work of the ACLU and its affiliates on behalf of aliens and make possible the coordination of their legal and educational strategies.

The Alien Rights Law Project of the Washington office of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law received a grant to coordinate legal representation for aliens appealing administrative decisions to deny them asylum. Most requests for asylum based on claims of persecaution