Clarisa Reyes-Becerra

The Project

Clarisa promotes and enforces immigrants’ rights to access health care in California’s rural Central Valley by providing direct immigration legal services, conducting community education and outreach, and engaging in litigation and policy advocacy.

Immigrant families are often excluded from our health care and public benefits systems, oftentimes due to their immigration status, and other times because of complex eligibility and income restrictions, language access barriers, and fear of immigration consequences for seeking public assistance. Moreover, immigrant families in California’s Central Valley lack access to affordable legal services to inform them of their immigration relief options and health care rights. These access barriers have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and exclusionary immigration policies, such as the constantly changing “public charge” rules, which have caused otherwise qualifying immigrant families or their US citizen children to disenroll or avoid public benefits for fear of being disqualified from obtaining lawful status.

From her own family’s experiences with the health care system, Clarisa understands that underserved minority patients can suffer poorer health outcomes, and even death, because of discriminatory practices. Her family’s perseverance motivates her to improve health outcomes and access to health care for immigrant families through legal intervention.

Fellowship Highlights to Date

In the first year of the Fellowship, Clarisa has:

• Reached 2,000+ individuals through 50+ community presentations on immigrant rights to health care.
• Provided more than 20 trainings to health, education, and social services providers (i.e., doctors, social workers, promotoras, community-based organizations, school administrators, and educators).
• Engaged in two impact litigation cases, one related to notario fraud and one related to what proof is required for immigrants to obtain Medi-Cal access.
• Represented more than 40 individuals in U visa, VAWA self-petitions, and other immigration cases.
• Provided individual legal consultations and brief services to more than 150 individuals on immigration issues.

Next Steps

In the next year, Clarisa plans to:

• Continue ongoing immigration cases, community education presentations, and training health care and social services providers on immigrant rights to access to health care and public benefits.
• Collaborate with CRLAF’s coalition of legal partners to strategize how to best ensure that some of the reforms that have been implemented during the COVID-19 continue after the pandemic.
• Work with federally qualified health centers and community-based organizations to expand community education and immigration legal services in collaboration with ongoing COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

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