September 5, 2024
Support our San Diego Gives campaign!
Thank you for your support, San Diego! We are a North County based non-profit, and every dollar we receive funds the transformative work we do in support of immigrants and refugees across San Diego County. Thank you for considering UURISE in your giving!
San Diego Dreams Come to Life with UURISE
San Diego County is a diverse and vibrant border region with a large population of immigrants from around the world. With a range of industries, from biotech to health care to agriculture to higher education, San Diego continues to be a region that attracts and requires a labor force that includes immigrants.
The U.S. immigration legal system is a hodgepodge of laws, regulations, and executive orders, some antiquated and others coming down quickly from government agencies, often leaving legal service organizations little time to learn and ramp up new practices.
A person’s immigration legal status can literally be a matter of life or death, so expertise and attention to changes in the law is critical for legal professionals engaged in immigration law.
Since our founding in 2007, Unitarian Universalist Refugee & Immigrant Services & Education (UURISE) has been meeting the ever-changing moment of immigration law and advocacy in San Diego County and beyond. We provide excellent, low-cost and no-cost legal and ancillary services through our multi-disciplinary team of providers. Because of our grounding in the Unitarian Universalist faith community’s values, we approach the work with deep care for our clients; a unique, trauma-informed process that engages clients as partners; and a systemic perspective in which we are not only legal service providers but also advocates for humane, comprehensive immigration reform.
Our Impact:
Legal Services
UURISE provides low-cost and no-cost immigration legal services to help clients access the protections and benefits available under current immigration laws.
UURISE professional legal staff provides one-on-one counseling and representation that always starts with a comprehensive consultation to assess current immigration status and potential immigration relief. In the community, UURISE hosts group workshops to provide no-cost assistance for naturalization and DACA renewals.
CARE Services
UURISE provides no-cost CARE (Connections / Advocacy / Resource Navigation / and Emergency Safety Planning for Immigrants) services to individuals and families.
CARE services start with a simple screening that helps identify and assess current needs related to food security, housing, safety, and health. From there, UURISE can direct immigrants to community resources that are available to them regardless of their immigration legal status.
Justice Services
UURISE responds to the needs of a wide variety of communities and partners by providing services designed to support and further justice for immigrants.
This includes education services on a variety of issues, either as community events for immigrants, or as workshops for community partners who serve and interact with immigrants.
Our Justice Services also include what we call “Faithful Justice.” This is work that we do with faith communities and congregations that want to develop or deepen their work in service of immigrants and refugees. This includes a range of possibilities, from sanctuary discernment, to pulpit supply, to supporting congregations in creating Justice Portals / Ventanillas de justicia, in which congregations leverage their physical space and technology to make it possible for immigrants in underserved areas to access UURISE legal services.