‘Nebraska Is Home’ reaches Schuyler

SCHUYLER �” Schuyler kicked off its “Nebraska Is Home” campaign Thursday at City Hall to help disseminate a more positive message about what immigrants bring to the community.

The statewide “Nebraska Is Home” campaign is being organized by Nebraska Appleseed, “a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes equal justice and full opportunity for all Nebraskans.” The campaign has been coordinated in Grand Island, Seward, Crete and now Schuyler. Each of the communities has diverse populations.

Although Nebraska Appleseed is organizing the campaign and looking for additional communities to participate, how communities decide to utilize the program is up to its residents.

Vanessa Martinez, community coordinator for “Nebraska Is Home,” said “Nebraska Is Home” is a new effort to build community and show support for the immigrant community through conversations, education and positive messages.

It is a community-based and community-led effort, Martinez said, and Nebraska Appleseed is simply providing a starting point for communities to begin dialogue and coordinating events to inform the public on the benefits immigrants bring to communities across Nebraska and the state as a whole.

“There are a lot of negative messages out there about the immigrant community. We want to get out a positive message about immigrants,” she said.

Local business owner Luis Lucar said this is a way to begin promoting unity and get more immigrants integrated and involved in Schuyler.

The “Nebraska Is Home” campaign “encourages us to work harder to bring the community together,” Lucar said. “We simply want to be a part of neighbors getting to know one another. We need to learn more about our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates. We want to build Schuyler’s future together.”

Mayor David Reinecke, who attended the kick off, said he is supportive of bringing the community together and recognizing the contribution being made by immigrants.

“If it was not for immigrants ... (Schuyler) may look like it died 20 years ago,” Reinecke said, and “we assume any Hispanic is here legally.”

The mayor will be a proponent of this new effort as long as it doesn’t interfere with his oath of office, he said, but if the group decides to focus on supporting or providing services to undocumented or illegal immigrants then he will be unable to maintain encouragement of the group’s efforts.

Although the group’s efforts are in the infant stage, Lucar said he does not foresee the group focusing on immigration policy and issues, but to take a more local approach about bringing the immigrant population and the rest of the community together.

“Our goal is to re-enforce us as community members, volunteers, as families,” he said, with “common goals to work, to be a part of the community and to share in the same values.”