DENVER — Sarah Plastino was running her own consulting business related to immigration. She is an immigration attorney who has worked in this realm for over 15 years. 9NEWS reporter Angeline McCall sat down with her on Thursday to talk about Plastino's vision for the future.
Q: First of all, who are you? You're new to this position - Why did you want it?
A: Sure. For the folks at home, my name is Sarah Plastino. I am an immigration attorney. I have been doing immigration defense work for 15 plus years, primarily with folks who are facing deportation, in immigration detention and immigrant children. I'm from Philadelphia. I'm a mom, and I've been a Denver resident for the last seven years. So, the reason I wanted this position was because I have been doing advocacy work, policy work and working with immigrants directly for my whole career.
Immediately before this, I was working for myself. I had my own business as a consultant, but most of my clients were based out of DC. I live on the North side, right down the street from one of the newcomer shelters. I just thought to myself, this is silly, I should be working in my own community right now. There's a huge need. So, I decided to close on my business and do this position instead.
Q: Coming in from the outside, there's been a lot of different policy changes over the course of the last 18 months or so as migrants have arrived. What's one of the immediate things that you would like to change or improve?
A: My two philosophies coming into this job are compassion and fiscal sustainability. We are going to be moving from a reactive stance to a proactive stance. So, we are designing a sustainable long-term program. Everyone in the government, we're all aligned on this. We want to be moving from emergency response to programmatic long-term response. So, we're in that transition. We're designing that program. I think that everyone would agree that that's a much better stance to be in, and we have a bit of luxury to do that now because we're not receiving 144 buses a month like we were in December.
Q: So where do you see yourself and the response six months from now?
A: I see myself just where I am today, coordinating interagency throughout the city, for all of the folks who are working so hard to make sure we are responding in a welcoming way, but also in a practical way. So I hope that we will be in a position where we have a program in place that is less expensive, and that is serving folks better.
Q: So recently, the city has been closing down shelters, especially this month. We know that last year there was this trend of high numbers during December, January and then lower numbers during the late winter, early spring, then high numbers during going into summer. What is the city's plan if those numbers increase, and what would you advocate for?
A: So, we are expecting more folks to arrive as we get farther into spring because that's just seasonal migration patterns. That's natural cycle of migration that we see year-after-year. We are prepared to handle a larger number of folks arriving than today.
We do have plans in place for congregate shelter options, if a large number of people do arrive on a daily basis. And so, we will not be caught off guard if that happens.
Q: Do you anticipate reopening some of the shelters that you've closed?
A: Our plan is not to reopen them. We would like to decommission them permanently. That's part of creating efficiencies, bringing down our costs. So, there is no plan to reopen them. We have other options in the event that we need more space for more people on a short-term basis.
Q: Over the last 12 months, sheltering was really, from the outside looking in, a main priority for the city. It was sheltering as an emergency response. If sheltering is no longer the priority, what will you consider the priority moving forward?
A: We are really trying to prioritize integrating folks into our community in a successful way. We're prioritizing getting people access to work permits, getting people access to jobs, helping folks get in their own apartments. Basically, welcoming the newcomers and integrating them into our community in the most successful way so that our city continues to be as vibrant as it possibly could be.
Q: Well, let's take a step back. We know that migrants are creating a financial strain on the city. We also know that perhaps they will create an additional strain on other city resources, such as the housing sector, such as rental assistance, such as food banks, which we've already seen. How do you anticipate your role fitting in in terms of preparing those other agencies and ensuring that if you guys are being fiscally responsible as a city, not, you know, financially backing as many resources, that it doesn't mean that the responsibility is on other agencies or departments?
A: Our ecosystem is not just the city. It's the nonprofit sector. It's the foundation sector. It's the schools. We all are actively working together on this. We have an advisory council from key stakeholders in the community. We meet regularly. So, we are coordinating as well with the state on the big picture funding landscape to make sure that we are addressing any gaps, and we are doing as best we can to shore up those resources in the community that long term Denverites utilize as well as newcomers.
A: I think we're being realistic with migrants about what they can expect if they arrive here. They can expect an economy that's a bit tighter than maybe, you know, a year and a half ago, when folks started arriving because of the number of folks that have arrived since then. It's more difficult to find a job. It's more difficult to find a house because of the housing market, and it's also a very expensive city relative to other places. So because of those reasons, I think a lot of newcomers are choosing to go other places. We would encourage them to go to places where they see the most opportunities for them and their families, and that's just normally how migration patterns go.
Q: When you look at the success rate of migrants, I don't think we've ever talked about that, in an interview or as a city, what does it look like for migrants to actually be successful in creating a life here? And what metric would you use to measure that?
A: I think it just looks like what it looks like for, you know, all of us, right? It's having a degree of stability, it's being able to make ends meet. It's being able to put food on the table. It's having a roof over your head. It's having your children receive a quality education. It's having a stable job with good rights behind you with your employer.
We are transitioning more into that phase because a lot of folks who have arrived in and are remaining in our communities are building lives for themselves. So we are very aware of where we are and kind of the lifecycle of the needs of the newcomers. We are putting a lot of emphasis on stability and integration at this point, ESL classes, you know, job training, that type of thing.
Q: And more specifically, the metric that the city would use as well to measure the city's success rate in using resources to support those migrants. How would you measure the success of the city resources allocated for a migrant?
A: We believe that our response in the last several months has been very successful because we have exited thousands of folks from shelter. We have seen very little instances of people on the streets, children outside, etc. So that is our main concern. It's making sure that we don't see children who don't have a roof over their head, and we are creating safety nets to make sure that doesn't happen. So for me, a metric would be low number of unsheltered homelessness for families and also metrics of getting folks into long term housing.
Q: When we talk about long term housing, and you know, that's definitely one of the big funding portions of this, what the city has allocated so far to help people. For instance, through nonprofit work to get into housing, first month's rent, for instance, deposit. We know that some of those people who've been placed can't afford those apartments, and now we're seeing also people on the eviction docket. How do you continue to support and perhaps a program that maybe is helping people on the front end, but then not continually supporting them so that they can't stay in that housing?
A: So, this is a really important issue. In my background as an immigration advocate, I've worked very closely with social workers. I'm very acutely aware of all of the needs that come when a family is trying to stabilize. So, we have frequent discussions about eviction support, it is something that we need to grow in the next few months with foundations and case management nonprofits. It's something that the Denver nonprofit community is already working very hard on. As that potential comes in the next few months, that's something that we're really going to try to shore up.
A: Well, the mayor has been very clear that he considers our current system to be financially unsustainable. I completely agree. So we are very deliberately designing a system that is more fiscally sustainable for us. It's very important to us to utilize taxpayer dollars in a sustainable way. We can't pick the emergencies that that befall us as a city. So, when hundreds of folks were arriving per day in December, in January, we had to make sure that everyone was safe. So, we're playing a bit of catch up from that large expenditure, but we absolutely want to make sure that moving forward, we are trying our best to bring cost down.
Q: What does the city plan to do if encampments start to pop up again? We saw this over the last few months when the numbers sort of dwindled down as numbers have sort of leveled off. What is the city's long-term plan when it comes to new encampments?
A: So the long-term plan is what we are currently doing. It is focusing on prevention as much as possible. So specifically for the newcomers, as distinct from people experiencing homelessness. We have several transitional spaces that we are providing to folks who have exited our shelter system but just need a bit more time to get self sustainable. We're trying to prevent people from ending up in those encampments. If an encampment does arise, like the one at Elitches, for instance, we have a system in place to to work with those folks to try to get them inside and to offer them options and case management.
Q: Anything else you'd like to say?
A: I would just like to add the folks out there to understand that people leaving Venezuela are being displaced in mass. This is a true displacement refugee crisis. A quarter of the population of Venezuela has left the country since 2017. So I know that because people say 'I want to work,' that a lot of people think that the newcomers are here purely for economic reasons. But this is a government-created crisis in Venezuela. The folks are coming here because we have a free economy. We have the ability to access food and so on. I just want folks to also understand that these people are displaced and are refugees as well.
Q: Based on your answer one more question for people who are ineligible for work, can't get TPS aren't eligible for a work permit. What avenues is the city plan to create so that those people can have work opportunities, despite the fact that they may not be eligible from a federal standpoint?
Q: So we are planning a series of asylum clinics to help people file their asylum applications, so that they get on a timetable to be able to access their work authorization six months from now. That is a key component. We're also continuing to advocate for the federal government for a reissuance of TPS, so that anybody who arrived after July of last year would become eligible for TPS. That's really the best solution from a federal standpoint, because that's exactly what TPS was designed for - for people who are here from countries experiencing war or natural disasters.
Q: Is the city going to now sort of help migrants with LLCs other avenues? I mean, I know the community is talking about this a lot.
A: So the nonprofit community is doing that and we absolutely encourage it. As a city, we're a bit more limited and our, you know, ability to encourage informal work. Certainly, people will do what they need to do to survive, and there are mechanisms that folks can utilize to make sure they're paying their taxes and doing things as formally as possible.
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