Hackathon for Immigration Solutions Held in LA
By Steve Angeles, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau
Posted at 08/07/2015 4:35 PM
CALIFORNIA – Los Angeles city leaders brought together some of the top scientific minds to use technology to improve the lives of immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
While the word hacking is usually associated with computer security problems, hacking can also mean solving problems. That’s why the City of Los Angeles held a hack-a-thon for a good cause: immigration.
“While we’re waiting for comprehensive immigration reform, we all have a lot of things we can do. So many people leave on the table the resources, the information that people who prey on them for thousands of dollars without helping them with their cases and we think that’s what the city should be doing, just as cities like New York did in the turn of last century to help the people coming off the boats to learn to become Americans,” said Los Angeles city mayor Eric Garcetti.
Hundreds of computer engineers and techies got together to try to hack out some solutions to immigration services. This is part of the city’s Challenge LA Competition which calls on Angelenos to use technology to address some of the issues facing America’s second largest city.
“We are hoping to bring all these programmers and all these techies here to hopefully come up with some good idea that can help the immigrant community, whether it’s kind of to educate the community about immigration fraud or try to get information on citizenship,” said Joe Bernardo of the LA Mayor’s Office on Immigrant Affairs.
Garcetti, along with mayors of Chicago and New York have also started a network of mayors lobbying for immigration reform. He tackled the issue on a recent trip to Washington, DC.
Among those helping guide Angelenos is the Mark Zuckerberg-founded fwd.us, a think tank group of tech world giants leading the technological battles for immigration reform.
“We believe in the power of harnessing innovative technology and technologist like yourselves to improve our political system, our cities, and therefore, the lives of citizens across the United States. Our leadership decided the first issue that we should tackle is immigration reform. So clearly, we don’t shy away from big challenges nor do you. That’s why we’re here today,” said Catherine Lyons of fwd.us.
The immigration hack did narrow down a few ideas, including streamlined portals for immigration needs and apps to help access documents.