At a time when the U.S. is experiencing virulent anti-immigrant attacks and a rise in explicit white supremacy, white nationalism, and xenophobia, a number of immigrant justice movement allies decided to take a step back from our ongoing work to defend against these attacks and devote attention to envisioning what it would take to create a society in which everyone—including immigrants—can live a life of freedom, dignity, safety, and belonging.

With the level of pain and trauma that immigrant communities are experiencing—as well as the courage and resilience they have manifested—we have greater political clarity of what we are up against. This moment calls on us to co-create and co-develop a long-term vision and narrative for immigrant justice that is not constrained by today’s political realities to serve as our North Star. We need an audacious vision to meet our communities’ needs and demands, to effectively counter our opponents’ regressive and punitive immigration policy agenda, and that inspires our allies and communities to help us conceive a better world for today’s children, youth, their families and loved ones, as well as future generations.

We entered this process knowing that because the stakes are so high, we could not afford to squander this moment. A design team identified key leaders representative of the diversity in the movement to join the Immigrant Movement Visioning Process. This culminated in a powerful group of around 50 leaders who met over a fourteen-month planning process aimed at building trust and strengthening relationships, dreaming together, committing to coordinating with a diverse spectrum of allies to collectively shape a long-term vision for the immigrants’ rights movement, and beginning to develop a shared analysis of what is needed in the short-, medium-, and long-term to shift power at local, state, and federal levels to achieve this vision. The process included the creation of a learning space through webinars, scenario planning, and a landscape analysis conducted by Macro Advisory Partners which increased our collective understanding about a multitude of social, political, and environmental trends, challenges, and opportunities that may impact the lives of migrants as well as the future of migration to the U.S.

Through this planning process, including three in-person retreats, we endeavored to practice the type of transformation we believe is needed within the immigrant justice movement to bring about lasting and transformative change. Over the last 20 years, there have been other strategy discussions and convenings among immigrants’ rights movement leaders, but we believe our visioning plan is the first of its kind to center impacted communities and to be co-led by a majority of individuals affiliated with directly-impacted, membership-based, and immigrant-led organizations. It is especially important that this process has centered groups that have not been traditionally included such as Black and Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) immigrant communities.

We see this process as the beginning, not the end. Planning together for over a year helped us deepen the relationships and trust necessary to give birth to a collective vision for transformational change, and laid the groundwork for our next steps: expanding the conversation and building alignment around strategies to shift power in the short- and medium-term and achieve our vision in the long term.