The Reward We Get Aiding a Worthy and Noble Cause

We at Ceisler Media have had the pleasure of serving as The Immigration Hub’s Pennsylvania communications consultants for the past three years. The Hub was founded in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and former President Trump’s demonization of our immigrant neighbors.

Hub co-founder (and newly-appointed Special Assistant to the President) Tyler Moran recognized a need to provide support to candidates and elected officials facing attacks on immigration, and shift the conversation toward finding humane, commonsense solutions to fix our broken immigration system.

Our work with the Hub began in 2018, in the wake of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to redraw the state’s Congressional map to rid it of unconstitutional gerrymandering. We were able to use our deep understanding of Pennsylvania politics to help guide the Hub’s strategy during a deeply uncertain midterm cycle in Congressional elections, as well as two statewide races that prominently featured anti-immigrant rhetoric.

In addition to providing strategic and communications support, we began building a statewide network of allies – and this has been the best part of working with The Immigration Hub. Over the past three years, we have created a wide-ranging coalition of organizations, leaders, and activists. It has been an amazing experience to meet so many smart, dedicated and passionate people who are working hard to support our immigrant neighbors.

It has been truly inspiring to see the work that groups like CASA and MILPA do here in Pennsylvania, and to be able to play a role in bringing attention to their crucial work. Our efforts with our coalition partners have provided us with the opportunity to place dozens of op-eds across the state—some from elected officials, others from immigration activists, and in one memorable instance, a DACA recipient who had to request anonymity to tell his story because he didn’t want to put his undocumented parents at risk. It has been a privilege to work with those folks to help tell their stories.

Throughout the time we’ve worked with the Hub, they have always remained on the cutting edge and at the center of the action. In 2020, they conducted extensive message testing and voter modeling in PA and other states, identifying millions of voters who were persuadable on the issue of immigration to help guide their advertising strategy. The insights they gleaned from this research were fascinating, and having access to such an incredible resource was a tremendous help to our work.

One of the Biden administration’s top legislative priorities is a historic immigration bill that would grant legal status and a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented folks who have been in this country for years, providing a permanent fix for the “Dreamers.” The Ceisler team is looking forward to joining that fight for a long-overdue solution for our broken immigration system.

Looking ahead to next year, we will have another new Congressional map that will likely have one fewer seat on it, and statewide races for Senate and governor that will likely feature anti-immigrant rhetoric, as they did in 2018.

We are proud to be the Hub’s Pennsylvania partners. We appreciate the incredible working relationship we’ve developed over the past three years. Tackling this immense challenge isn’t easy, but we’re lucky to have folks like the Hub taking on this important effort.

We are honored to be able to play some small role in the fight to allow 11 million of our neighbors to come out of the shadows and live their lives in peace.