Tag: immigration reform activists

Sharpton in Arizona Evokes Civil Rights Struggle in Fight for Immigration Reform

Activists plan “freedom rides” to monitor alleged civil rights abuses by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office

PHOENIX, Arizona — In a visit that drew heavily on the tactics and symbolism of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Rev. Al Sharpton came to Phoenix on Friday to call for unity between African-Americans and Hispanics in a national effort for immigration reform, and to confront Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a leading anti-immigrant crusader.

Watch highlights from Sharpton’s visit to Arizona.

In an emotional speech, Sharpton denounced the alleged persecution of Latino citizens and the raids in Hispanic neighborhoods organized by Sheriff Arpaio under the the 287 (g) federal program, which allows local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws.

“Let me make this clear, we’re not here about Sheriff Joe as much as we are here about Citizen Jose,” said Sharpton at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in downtown Phoenix, in front of a diverse audience that included Latinos, Anglos and African-Americans. Sharpton had called for Arpaio’s resignation last April.

Sharpton: "Don’t make me a suspect because of the color of my skin or because of my language” - Photo: Feet in 2 Worlds

Sharpton: "Don’t make me a suspect because of the color of my skin or because of my language.” (Photo: Feet in 2 Worlds)

“You cannot have law enforcement that is based on skin color rather than private deeds,” he added. “If we break the law, arrest me. But don’t make me a suspect because of the color of my skin or because of my language.”

(more…)

Cautious Optimism Despite Another Delay in White House Immigration Reform Talks

President Obama - Photo: WhiteHouse.gov

There is no new date set for the immigration meeting. (Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)

Friday afternoons are often when bad news is made public in Washington D.C. Pro-immigration advocates were reminded of this last week when they learned that President Barack Obama for the second time postponed a bipartisan meeting on immigration reform due to “scheduling conflicts.”

But activists are keeping a sunny outlook in the face of increasing doubts about the White House’s commitment to have significant work done on the issue this year.

We’re disappointed at the delay, but this does not diminish the importance of passing comprehensive immigration reform this year,” Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D.-N.Y.), president of the Hispanic Caucus in Congress, told Los Angeles newspaper La Opinión.

The bipartisan meeting, which is expected to include members of both houses of Congress, was scheduled initially for June 8th, then rescheduled for Wed. June 17th. Now, there’s no certainty about the new date.

Univisión.com‘s Jorge Cancino quotes an unidentified White House official as saying the meeting would take place this week, although the source mentions no date or time. La Opinión reports it has been pushed to next week.

(more…)

Organizations Launch National Campaign to Push For Immigration Reform

Some 200 activist groups from across the country have announced a nationwide campaign to push for immigration reform.

The Reform Immigration For America campaign was launched Monday at events in over 40 cities, according to organizers. A national launch in Washington D.C. is scheduled for Wednesday at the National Press Club, according to a press release. The coalition is also bringing 700 activists from at least 35 states to the national capital for a national summit between Wednesday and Friday that will include a “National Town Hall” on Thursday.

According to the announcement,

This groundbreaking, momentum-building effort organizes supporters of immigration reform into a stronger, more effective, and politically savvy national campaign that will help support President Obama and ensure that his promises of comprehensive immigration reform become legislative reality.

(more…)

Immigrant New Yorkers March Today for Immigration Reform

Javier Cuenca (in red) and another activist during preparations for today's May Day immigration rally - Photo: Maibe Gonzalez.

Javier Cuenca (in red) and another activist during preparations for today’s May Day immigration rally. (Photos: Maibe Gonzalez)

About a dozen documented and undocumented immigrants showed up yesterday at the Queens, NY office of community organization Make The Road New York, where they painted signs, packed food and coordinated transportation. Some also prepped to speak at one of today’s May Day rallies in Manhattan.

A prominent immigrant advocacy organization, Make the Road is one of about 60 community, faith and labor groups that are expected to participate in two major demonstrations for immigration reform this afternoon, as part of a national action day that includes demonstrations in a number of cities. (Feet in Two Worlds will have reports on rallies throughout the day.)

One of the volunteers was Javier Oscar Cuenca, a 33-year-old, football-player type Argentinean who recently moved from New Jersey to Queens.

Cuenca has been in the United States for eight years after overstaying a tourist visa and has sustained himself by painting houses. He’s been unemployed for the last four months, but is hopeful that under President Barack Obama reforms will be enacted that help him obtain legal status, work, and attend college. Despite being undocumented, Cuenca said he didn’t mind being identified in this story.

“I’m doing this because I have faith the reform will pass,” Cuenca said. “I’m 80 percent confident it will pass.”

Speaking of immigration reform at his White House news conference on Wednesday, President Obama reiterated his desire to “move this process.” But the president also indicated that strengthening the U.S.-Mexico border is a pre-condition.

If the American people don’t feel like you can secure the borders, then it’s hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship who are already here, because the attitude of the average American is going to be, well, you’re just going to have hundreds of thousands of more coming in each year.

(more…)

Deported Immigration Activist Reminds Obama of Plight of the Children of the Undocumented

MEXICO CITY — As President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico City Thursday, a small group of immigration activists demonstrated at the U.S. Embassy on leafy Paseo de la Reforma, close to downtown. They were there to demand comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. and a stop to immigration raids and deportations.

Children who are U.S. citizens but now live in Mexico because of their parents’ deportations were there. After President Obama said at his speech in the Democratic National Convention last year that no one “benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child,” activists had hoped he would stop deportations that break up families with an executive order. That has not happened.

The Pew Hispanic Center said this week that 73% of the children of undocumented immigrants were born in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens.

One of the protesters present was Elvira Arellano, who became known nationwide when she fought a deportation order in 2006 by seeking sanctuary inside a Chicago church. Arellano was finally deported in 2007 and now runs a shelter for deported women and children in Tijuana while continuing to work for immigration reform from the other side of the border. She came to the embassy with her 10-year-old son, Saúl, a U.S. citizen.

You can watch a slideshow on the Arellanos below or, for higher quality, go to our YouTube channel.

Activists Announce May Day Demonstrations For Immigration Reform In Several Cities

Immigration activists confirmed Thursday that marches are planned for several cities on May Day to press the Obama Administration and Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform.  Immigrant advocates want to put pressure on the president to follow through on campaign promises to reform the nation’s immigration system. They also want a stop to enforcement raids and deportations.

“On May 1, we’ll go out on the streets to tell Barack Obama’s government and the Congress that we need an immigration reform with a path to legalization for millions of the undocumented,” Juan José Gutiérrez, director of Movimiento Latino USA, told Univision Interactive Multimedia (UIM) in Los Angeles.

Activists in L.A., Gutierrez added, will start demonstrating this Saturday, April 4, on the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “We will tell (the president) that the date is coming, the countdown to the 100 days when he promised to send an immigration reform proposal to Congress,” he said.

Gutiérrez said Obama had promised L.A. activists to send a bill to Congress before his first 100 days in office during a meeting in December 2007.

(more…)

DREAM Act Supporters Try Again: Pro-Immigrant Students Bill Introduced In House And Senate

In a preview of the immigration debate, Congress is getting ready to consider a bill that would provide a path to citizenship to undocumented students who graduate from college, a trade school or join the military.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in both the Senate and the House last Thursday, in the latest incarnation of an initiative that has failed to pass several times since 2003.

According to a press release from the office of Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.),

The measure would grant conditional legal status to youth who successfully complete high school or equivalent. They then would have six years to graduate from college or a trade school or join the military. If successful in one of those areas, the conditional legal status would become permanent and they could then move towards U.S. citizenship.

“Approximately 50,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools each year; however, without legal status, it is difficult for them to secure a job or afford to attend college,” Lugar said. “This measure will provide these young people with an incentive to move towards permanent residency while pursuing an education or other worthwhile service.

“Undocumented young people usually arrive with their families and have no understanding of their immigration status. They should be encouraged to complete an education and move toward permanent residency.”
To be eligible, youngsters must have entered the U.S. before they were 16 and have spent five years in the country before the date of the bill’s becoming law. They need to “have earned a high school diploma or GED, be a person of good moral character; and not be inadmissible or deportable under criminal or security grounds of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”

The bill has at least some bipartisan support: it was introduced by Lugar and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in the Senate, and by Representatives Howard Berman (D.-Calif.) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R.-Fla.) in the House.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, “versions of the DREAM Act have been considered, without much success, in 2003, 2005, 2006 and as part of a large immigration reform package in 2007.”

As we have reported in the past, immigrant students and other Dream Act supporters hope the bill will pass this time — and they count on an important ally in the White House: President Barack Obama, who expressed support for it during the presidential campaign.

Activists are conducting several campaigns to support passage of the bill. The blog Citizen Orange lists the following:

– The National Council of La Raza is encouraging people to call their Congressional representatives.

– America’s Voice asks people to fax their representatives.

– Change.org is asking for emails to Congress.

– And those interested can also text “Justice”, or “Justicia” for Spanish, to 69866 to be the first to know when the DREAM Act is introduced, courtesy of FIRM.

Information is also available at Dream Act 2009.

While pro-immigrant activists welcomed the news of the bill’s introduction, the immigration-restrictionist camp is getting ready to oppose it.

“The shamnesty crowd is ready to roll again,” conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin wrote. “The illegal alien college tuition discount bill … has been reintroduced.”

Chicago Congressman Takes His Push For Immigration Reform On The Road To 14 Cities

CNSNews.com.

Gutierrez at a pro-immigration vigil last week. (Photo: CNSNews.com)

While most news these days focuses on the economic crisis and its hoped-for solution, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D.-Ill.) wants to remind the Obama Administration of the need for immigration reform.

The congressman announced he is going on a five-week, 14-city tour “to document the harm caused to citizens across our nation in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform,” according to a press release.

From Providence, R.I., to Albuquerque, N.M., from El Paso, Texas, to Tampa, Fla. to Philadelphia, Gutierrez plans to hold rallies “for thousands of U.S. citizens whose families have been or risk being torn apart by our broken immigration system,” and he will gather petitions for the passage of a comprehensive reform bill.

Speaking at a recent prayer vigil on Capitol Hill, Gutierrez vowed to deliver thousands of those petitions to President Barack Obama, CNSNews.com reported. He wants to remind the president of his campaign promise of a reform that includes “a path to citizenship” for the undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

(more…)

In New York, Immigrant Advocates Join the Chorus Questioning Gillibrand's Nomination to U.S. Senate

Anti-gun activists are howling against Gov. David Patterson’s nomination of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to succeed Hillary Clinton as the junior senator from New York.

But the Second Amendment isn’t the only issue likely to cause trouble for Gillibrand, judging from a statement released Friday by the New York Immigration Coalition.

“Now that she will be representing a far broader and more diverse constituency, Senator-Designee Gillibrand must reconsider her positions on immigration,” Chung-Wha Hong, the NYIC’s executive director, said in the statement.

As a U.S. representative, Hong said, Gillibrand has taken positions on immigration “that are deeply troubling, to say the least.”

(more…)

Pro-Immigration Demonstrations: A Reminder to Obama of a Campaign Promise

One day after Pres. Barack Obama’s inauguration, demonstrations were held across the country to remind the president of his promise to address immigration reform in the first year of his administration. Protesters in Washington D.C. and several other cities also called for an immediate end to government raids aimed a rounding up undocumented immigrants.

Express-News)

Demonstrators in San Antonio (Photo: Express-News)

“Immigrants who lent President Barack Obama their support at the ballot box joined those who cannot vote in marches and prayers, writing letters and raising banners from Miami to Los Angeles to push the issue to the top of Obama’s long to-do list,” The Associated PressJuliana Barbassa reported.

The demonstrations were more of a friendly reminder to the new president from activists who don’t want the issue to be forgotten in the din of the economic crisis. “He was the one who told us that you can dream big,” Altagracia Garcia, 25, told Barbassa at a pre-dawn vigil in front of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Los Angeles, where demonstrators lit candles and called for and end to immigration enforcement raids.

(more…)