On January 28, 2025, the Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) and Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) hosted a virtual training for service providers on immigration policy followed by questions and answers. This free, public session covered several key topics, including: 

• Recent policy changes announced or implemented by the Trump administration and their potential impact on immigrant communities in our region. 

• Existing laws and policies in the City of Seattle and Washington State that serve to protect our immigrant and refugee residents and workers. 

• Best practices for providers to protect and serve their immigrant and refugee clients. 

While there are many Know Your Rights resources available for individuals, this training was specifically designed to address the gap in resources for service providers and offered best practices for working with immigrant and refugee community members.  

Within minutes of launching the training session on Teams, the event hit the max capacity of 1,000 attendees demonstrating the demand for accurate information and local resources. More than anything, this session highlights the growing challenges facing providers working with immigrant and refugee clients and the need for more live trainings on these important topics. 

Due to the high volume of requests for access to a video recording of the training, we have made it available here on our Welcoming Seattle blog. We encourage you to share the recording with your network of providers and advocates who are working to support immigrant and refugee communities. Since there are moments in the video where the audio is a bit unclear, we encourage you to turn on the Subtitles/Closed Captions so you can understand everything. To do this, click on the CC button at the bottom of the video. If you don’t see it, hover your cursor over the video and a number of buttons will appear, including pause, volume, resizing video, and the CC button. 

For updates of upcoming NWIRP webinars and trainings, sign up for their newsletter. Sign up to OIRA’s Welcoming Seattle email newsletter to find out about our programs and projects, how we’re working with other city departments and partners to serve the community, and get access to resources and invitations to events.