Since the early 2000s, we have seen states and cities pass a range of policies to regulate their resident immigrant population. Immigration federalism scholars explain that partisan dynamics shape what types of policies states and localities pass, with Republican jurisdictions increasingly passing restrictive policies, and Democratic jurisdictions increasingly passing integration policies. Given that San Francisco is democratically controlled, progressive, and diverse in its population, its move towards integration is to be expected. In fact, San Francisco is well known to be the quintessential immigrant friendly city. It was one of the first cities to enact a sanctuary resolution and ordinance (in 1985 and 1989, respectively), and has continued to update its so-called sanctuary policy ever since, which severs the city from having an official role in enforcing federal immigration law. It has also led cities in passing a range of policies to welcome and integrate undocumented immigrant residents.

Against this backdrop, Making Immigrant Rights Real is an important contribution to the immigration scholarship, and more. It contributes theoretically by taking on the quintessential liberal city—San Francisco—and challenging us to think beyond partisanship, while also offering empirically ambitious research to unpack local dynamics. Els De Graauw’s analysis of the city’s policies is grounded in a comprehensive survey of all known 216 non-profits in San Francisco, paired with 127 open-ended interviews of nonprofit staff, city officials and employees, and leaders from other community-based organizations. She leverages local variation by examining nonprofits’ interactions across four city-level political institutions (legislature, executive, judiciary, and ballot initiative process) and three distinctive policy areas (language access, labor rights, and municipal ID cards). The book’s theoretical takeaway—that local nonprofits spearheaded integrationist efforts and collaborations with Democratic city officials (and not the other way around)—challenges, but also complements prior scholarship. And the book is an especially timely contribution for policymakers and activists in the field, who are seeking to pass similar integration policies.

The book’s primary focus on nonprofits is equally insightful. It articulates a fuller understanding of their political role than is conventionally understood. As a condition of their tax-exempt status, nonprofits are prevented from engaging in formal politics through lobbying or influencing legislation and political campaigns (pp. 47–48). These legal constraints limit them from influencing public officials and political decisions, and makes them unusual allies, let alone leaders, of reform movements to change policy. As De Graauw explains, prior scholarship only examines civic organizations that do not face these constraints (including public charities, social welfare organizations, labor unions, and trade associations), and leaves nonprofits largely unexamined because they are assumed to be neutral and apolitical (pp. 49–51). Making Immigrant Rights Real fills an important gap by addressing a central puzzle: how do nonprofits navigate their legal constraints and become strong advocates in policy enactment and implementation?

De Graauw addresses this question by first connecting nonprofits to America’s long history of civic organizations engaging in politics. Chapter 1 sets up this link to early settlement houses, mutual aid societies, and religious institutions, which provided social services and civic education to European Immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and worked alongside political parties and unions to advance integration policies. While the book’s empirical analysis is found in Chapters 3–5 and is contemporary in focus, Chapter 1’s historical review effectively broadens the book’s contribution. It frames nonprofits alongside the civil organizations of America’s past to spotlight their continued political salience. Chapter 2 sets up the book’s contemporary case studies by introducing San Francisco’s history, demographics, and city-level factors that shape how nonprofits operate today in city politics.

Chapters 3–5 provide the book’s three primary case studies (language access, labor rights, and municipal ID cards policies). Here, De Graauw offers a wealth of interviews to support the claim that nonprofits led in the city’s policy enactment and implementation, despite their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The book’s analytical approach to demonstrate this is particularly effective. First, each chapter carefully traces nonprofits’ strategic choices and rationales, over time—how they would gain allies in government, allies in other civic organizations, and would frame the issues. Second, Chapters 3–5 collectively demonstrate nonprofits’ strategic advocacy, by highlighting how their strategies and tactics varied when they engaged with different city-level political institutions (legislature, executive, judiciary, and ballot initiative process) and when they built either cross-sectoral or cross-organizational collaborations.

Chapter 3, for example, traces the Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) nonprofit’s leadership in fighting for language access. They formed a city-wide coalition with seven other nonprofits and gained city government allies in Supervisor Mable Teng and Mayor Willie Brown. This cross-sectoral collaboration offered mutual benefits; it empowered CAA with access to engage in policy advocacy, and granted city officials increased access to the immigrant community. As an advocate at CAA explained, the city’s Board of Supervisors needed their “assistance in gathering language statistics, gathering stories, and framing the argument” (p. 92). Supervisor Teng and Mayor Brown, however, excluded the nonprofit coalition from knowing about the status of their proposed bill (p. 94). As a result, the bill died in 1999. De Graauw unpacks how CAA and its coalition of nonprofits learned from this experience and sought new, more receptive allies in city governance. Subsequently, they passed the Equal Access to Services Ordinance in 2001, and expanded its protections in 2009 and 2015.

The book’s primary contribution is to place nonprofits front and center of today’s integration movement, and it successfully showcases their leadership in all three contemporary cases in Chapters 3–5. At the same time, the historical connections raised in Chapter 1 open the book up to even more questions. Nonprofits’ expertise takes time to develop, and De Graauw suggests that a tipping point emerges in her contemporary cases. San Francisco nonprofits worked exclusively as service providers while gaining expertise before transitioning into their advocacy role. Is this unique to nonprofits servicing immigrants, or do nonprofits servicing other minority groups experience a similar tipping point and process? More broadly, do other civic organizations develop expertise prior to becoming policy advocates? Is there a larger historical development story about nonprofits? These questions are not points of weakness, but rather attest to the strength of the study.

Making Immigrant Rights Real is an important scholarly contribution, and will be an important source for policymakers and activists on the ground. Integration movements developing in other states and cities can draw from what De Graauw terms a “tripartite model of advocacy strategies” to plan ahead (pp. 11–17). Nonprofits are a unique civic organization with a comparative advantage of engaging in sustained, long-term advocacy that extends from enacting policies, to implementation, to measuring impact by remaining connected to the immigrant community. As De Graauw shows, this makes them a valuable political asset in the struggle for immigrants’ rights.