São Paulo – São Paulo city mayor Fernando Haddad (affiliated with PT, the Workers’ Party), signed a decree last week which regulates the Municipal Policy for the Immigrant Population. In practical terms, the decree outlines actions to be taken by the municipality’s secretariats in rolling out a law sanctioned last July.
Key immigrant policy points include access to healthcare, social assistance, housing, sports, and culture programs, and the access of children, adolescents, and adults to municipal schools.
The decree renders permanent the Centro de Referência e Atendimento para Imigrantes (CRAI-SP), an immigrant services center open since November 2014. “The center is now legally secure, which ensures that the services provided for by law will be made available continuously,” explains Camila Baraldi, the coordinator of Migrant Policies at the Municipal Secretariat for Human Rights.
The center provides guidance to immigrants on migration-related paperwork procedures and on how to claim their rights and services with other government organizations.
Besides Human Rights, the decree involves the municipal secretariats for Social Assistance, Women’s Policy, Healthcare, Development, Labor and Entrepreneurship, Education, Culture, Housing, and Sports, Leisure and Recreation.
According to Baraldi, actions will be implemented along three different lines: Documentation, so immigrants and government bodies are made aware that the protocols submitted prior to the final papers are enough to ensure foreigners’ access to government services; Interculturality, to build knowledge and respect towards the culture of immigrants’ native countries in the provision of health services, for instance; and Language, so that not speaking Portuguese does not prevent foreigners from claiming their rights in Brazil.
“Hiring immigrants to cater to other migrants has yielded some rather interesting results,” says Baraldi, adding that at the Secretariat for Health, for instance, foreigners are working on assisting other immigrants. There are also plans to build ties between workers in other secretariats and the immigrants seeking their services, as well as offer Portuguese lessons to arriving immigrants.
According to the coordinator, this week, mayor Haddad’s team will likely sit down with the team of mayor-elect João Doria Júnior (PSDB) regarding the continuation of immigrant assistance action during the next term, which begins in January.
Along with the signing of the decree, a booklet was also launched with instructions as to where immigrants can go for public services, and a list of organizations that can be of assistance to them. The guide is being printed in seven different languages: Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Creole and Mandarin. The Arabic version should be available as of next week at the CRAI-SP. 750 booklets will be made available in each of the seven languages mentioned.
CRAI-SP is located on Rua Japurá, 234, in the Bela Vista district (near the Anhangabaú metro station). For further information call +55 11 3112-0074.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
