Over the course of seven months, Spitfire worked with a coalition of partners to educate and activate the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and immigrant rights communities around the need for comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship.
At the beginning of this work, Spitfire conducted a series of preliminary research activities to understand current perceptions about immigration reform. Based on this research, Spitfire developed messaging that focused on the frame of family unity, which has been near-universally accepted as the most effective frame. We also developed a comprehensive communication plan to guide the coalition’s work that was continuously updated when there were major developments in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform (e.g., Senate passage of the bill).
The LGBT community was a target audience for the duration of this project. We wanted to demonstrate why they should care about immigration reform and how the legislation would impact LGBT immigrants, beyond same-sex, binational couples. Our second target audience – legislative decision makers – changed based on where we were in the legislative process.
Numerous studies have shown that stories help create an emotional connection with target audiences and increase the credibility of an issue. With that in mind, we pursued an aggressive story collection and dissemination campaign designed to ensure members of the LGBT community and legislative decision makers were consistently hearing stories that demonstrate the importance of immigration reform to the LGBT community.
Spitfire worked with coalition partners to identify compelling stories and developed them into approximately 25 op-eds and blog posts that we placed in mainstream news outlets, LGBT news outlets and Hill publications. We also placed op-eds from LGBT rights movement leaders and joint op-eds from LGBT and immigration advocates. Along with each placement, Spitfire drafted corresponding social media posts to promote the op-eds and encouraged partner organizations to share them with their networks.
Spitfire worked with partner organizations to mobilize grassroots supporters to demonstrate that the LGBT community is actively engaged in the fight for reform. We utilized select opportunities to ensure the LGBT community was represented at large-scale immigrant rights rallies. We also equipped partner organizations with toolkits that contained all the materials they needed to conduct comprehensive grassroots outreach including LGBT-specific messaging and template social media posts.
During the holiday season, Spitfire developed and circulated e-cards that featured the stories of LGBT immigrants and their struggles with family separation and urged people to support immigration reform. These cards generated more than one million impressions on Twitter and were liked or shared on Facebook more than 4,200 times.
Finally, we conducted trainings for grassroots LGBT and immigration advocates on communication strategy and opposition messaging to ensure our messages were communicated clearly and consistently.
Spitfire and the coalition partners held regular check-in calls to discuss updates on legislative activity and communication opportunities. Spitfire also coordinated with other immigrant rights organizations to identify opportunities for the LGBT coalition. This rapid response was essential to ensure voices of the LGBT community were heard at critical points in the process, including votes on the Senate bill and the Supreme Court’s repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
their successes, outcomes of their work and the future of the group. The coalition felt as though they had successfully articulated the importance of immigration reform to the LGBT community. Several noted that they had seen a shift in understanding and awareness of immigrant rights issues among LGBT activists and advocacy groups.
The group specifically noted that they appreciated our assistance, stating that Spitfire organized the group and kept them on task. There was a potential for the group to splinter off once a partner’s “pet” issue was handled (e.g., the repeal of DOMA and its effect on binational couples), but the group felt that it was the cohesion of the coalition that kept them together and focused on the larger task at hand. Several partners expressed an interest in keeping the coalition intact, even though the official project is over.
Although immigration reform remains in the hands of House leadership, the partners are optimistic that the legislation will pass, and they feel their efforts helped raise the collective consciousness around the need for reform. As one leader put it, “We moved the needle, and that’s hard to do.”
