The Path Home Project’s Mission: What would it be like if the U.S. immigration system focused on welcoming rather than excluding? The Path Home Project tries to answer this question by listening to people with direct experience of the groundbreaking Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. We’re grateful to all the people who have agreed to share their stories, including some of the 2.7 million people who gained a path to citizenship through IRCA as well as the advocates who tirelessly fought for amnesty. We continue to gather and share stories that highlight a hopeful moment that allowed millions to fully contribute to their adopted homeland, and laid the groundwork for much of the immigrant rights landscape today.
The Path Home Project History: The Path Home Project was founded by writer and performer Kayhan Irani in 2016 when she approached action researcher Tammy Arnstein about collaborating on collecting stories of 1986 amnesty recipients. Documentary maker Robert Winn came on board shortly after and together they launched the first iteration of the Path Home, documenting stories of amnesty recipients. Tammy and Robert are continuing the project, and have added interviews with advocates and frontline workers who worked tirelessly to ensure that as many undocumented people as possible received amnesty. Oral historian Fanny Garcia and education specialist Brian Villa have rounded out our team, bringing tremendous skills and experience to the project. With potentially millions of amnesty beneficiary, advocate, and frontline worker stories to document, the Path Home Project is far from over.
Did you benefit from IRCA? If you would consider being part of the Path Home Project as a narrator, please share your contact info below.
The Path Home Project Team
Project lead
Tammy Arnstein is an action researcher and media maker. She employs personal storytelling and narrative in educational settings, participatory research projects, organizational development, and community events and dialogues to promote social change. She has worked as a consultant, researcher, and practitioner on immigrant integration policy, media education, youth development, and the intersection of education and mass incarceration. Tammy holds an EdD from Teachers College, Columbia University and wrote her dissertation on theater, personal storytelling and education for social change. She also holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and EdM from Teachers College, Columbia University. Currently, she works as the Director of Development and Strategic Communications for Proyecto Faro, a Rockland County-based immigrants rights and mutual aid organization focused on serving undocumented community members.
Project lead
Robert C. Winn is a documentary filmmaker who works at the intersection of story and policy. His projects put a human face on pressing social justice issues by foregrounding the voices of the people most affected. Working closely with stakeholders, he creates compelling, high impact media to raise public awareness, inform policy debates, and educate communities. Projects include Out of the Closet, Out of the Shadows, about LGBTQ immigrant rights activists working against deportation, Childhood in Translation, about the impact of language barriers on immigrant families, Grassroots Rising, about labor issues and the Asian Pacific Islander community in L.A., and Saigon, USA, about generational conflicts in the Vietnamese American community. Robert received a JD from Yale Law School and an MFA from USC School of Cinema-Television.
Project consultant
Fanny Julissa García is a Honduran American oral historian contributing work to Central American Studies with a focus on applied oral history, a term she coined to describe the use of oral histories to educate, inform policy change, and support communities endangered by state-inflicted violence. Her work focuses on immigration justice, detention and incarceration, family separation, and the transnational impact of failed border policies. Her work is informed by her own history as a formerly undocumented immigrant and as a survivor of trauma and generational poverty. Awards for her work as an oral historian include a National Endowment for the Humanities funded fellowship from the Oral History Association to work on Separated: Stories of Injustice and Solidarity which documents families’ experience of the Zero Tolerance policy which forcibly separated parents from their children at the U.S./Mexico border. She has worked with Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, and as an oral historian for The Path Home. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Oral History Review. She received an Associate’s Degree from Los Angeles Valley College, a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA, and a Master’s degree in Oral History from Columbia University.
Education consultant
Brian Villa is an education consultant for The Path Home Project, with a Master's in International Educational Development from Columbia University's Teachers College. His work focuses on improving college access and success, particularly for first-generation students. Brian's passion for education extends to his extensive tutoring experience with English Language Learners in California and New York. In addition to his educational insights, Brian brings a personal connection to the project as the son of a Mexican-born father, who was among the millions granted amnesty under IRCA after working as a farmworker in the fields of California. Originally from the East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area, he now resides in New York City.
Thank You to Our Supporters
LaborArts is an invaluable partner of the Path Home Project. Special thanks to Rachel Bernstein and May Chen.
The Path Home Project has been generously funded by the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund, Humanities New York, the Puffin Foundation, Queens Council on the Arts & the Asian Women’s Giving Circle.