Press Releases

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Contact:
For English language Media:
Donna De La Cruz, ddelacruz@communitychange.org, 202-339-9331, 202-441-3798 (cell)
For Spanish language Media:
Ricardo Ramírez, rramirez@communitychange.org,  202-339-9371, (202) 905-1738 (cell)

Families Say Heritage Study Will Not Stop Immigration Reform

(WASHINGTON)—Immigrant families delivered 5,000 pink slips today to the Heritage Foundation calling on its president, Jim DeMint, to resign after embracing racist, anti-immigrant leaders while making the case against immigration – all while unveiling a faulty anti-immigration study that has been widely denounced, even among experts within the conservative community.

The Center for Community Change is calling for the resignation of DeMint. DeMint is someone who has a history of recklessly opposing immigration reform at all cost – even if it means buttressing his arguments on faulty research from racist thinkers. Heritage has also been an outspoken opponent of any type of legislation that would provide a path to citizenship to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country.  Families who are part of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), of which the Center is a member, took part in today’s action.

“Under DeMint’s watch, the Foundation has released a widely criticized ‘economic study’ about the cost of immigration reform that was disturbingly anti-immigrant and openly hostile to immigrant families,” said Kica Matos, the Center for Community Change’s Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice. “The Center for Community Change has issued an online petition calling for DeMint’s resignation that has garnered approximately 6,600 signatures in less than a week.  By promoting theories of racial inferiority, Jim DeMint has earned his pink slip.”

Erendira Rendon of Chicago, one of the FIRM group members who is in Washington this week to attend the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup sessions, said the Heritage report and DeMint’s endorsement of it show that conservatives are willing to go to any lengths to stop immigration reform.

“In the report against immigration reform, the Foundation uses faulty numbers, and it also relied on research from white supremacists,” Rendon said. “This was an appalling failure of leadership. And it is disappointing to see the Heritage Foundation take up offensive and racist rhetoric rather than take the path other Republicans are forging toward achieving immigration reform.”

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For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 9, 2013
Contact:
For English language Media:
Donna De La Cruz, ddelacruz@communitychange.org, 202-339-9331, 202-441-3798 (cell)
For Spanish language Media:
Ricardo Ramírez, rramirez@communitychange.org,  202-339-9371, (202) 905-1738 (cell)

Leader of Conservative Foundation Should be Held Accountable for Repulsive Racialization of Immigration Debate

(WASHINGTON)–In response to the controversy over a Heritage Foundation report on immigration, Kica Matos, director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change, issued the following statement calling for Jim DeMint, President of the Foundation, to resign:

“No one should be surprised by the results of the Heritage Foundation’s “economic study” about the cost of immigration reform. After all, its president, Jim DeMint, is someone who has a history of unabashed opposition to immigration reform. And the Foundation has been an outspoken opponent of any type of legislation that would provide a path to citizenship to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country.  This toxic combination led to the release of a report that has been widely criticized for its intellectual dishonesty and blatant racism.

The results from The Heritage Foundation’s study would be laughable if the undercurrents of the study weren’t so disturbingly anti-immigrant and openly hostile to immigrant families.

Heritage completely ignores the economic benefits that immigrants bring to this country. Beyond the economics, however (which are on our side: the libertarian Cato Institute put out a study last year that said immigration reform would add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years), we must look at the true cost if we don’t fix our horribly mismanaged and broken immigration system: the cost of family separation. Every day that immigration reform legislation lingers, 1,100 families are separated.

To make matters worse, Heritage produced a report that blatantly attempts to racialize the debate over immigration reform.

In the study, immigrants are painted caricatured stereotypes reminiscent of this country’s shameful anti-immigrant history that Western Europeans from Ireland and Italy faced in the early 20th Century. For as long as people have been coming to the U.S., extreme anti-immigrant opponents have tried to cast people coming to this country as “takers,” ignoring  the long history of immigrants who have strived and thrived in America.

All of this is to say nothing of the hateful sentiments of the study’s co-author, Jason Richwine, who suggested in a 2009 paper that Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. have lower IQs than “white natives.”

The history of immigration in America is one in which immigrants add to the success of the nation overall and grow the economic pie.  When immigration reform passes, more workers and employers will pay their fair share of taxes, wages will increase for native-born and immigrant workers and consumer spending will expand. This will create millions of new jobs and it will raise the bar for all, instead of promoting a race to the bottom like our current immigration system.

The Heritage study is a smokescreen for conservative Republicans to hide behind. But that’s all it is, a smokescreen. Anti-immigrant senators are doing whatever they can to sink the bill. That’s why they introduced countless poison pill amendments, amendments that would require DNA testing, ban humanitarian travel, allow racial profiling, gut family re-unification provisions and keep immigrants from ever becoming citizens.

We cannot stand by and allow our country’s ugly history of racism and injustice to repeat itself.”

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For Immediate Release: Thursday, May 9, 2013
Contact:
For English language Media:
Donna De La Cruz, ddelacruz@communitychange.org, 202-339-9331, 202-441-3798 (cell)
For Spanish language Media:
Ricardo Ramírez, rramirez@communitychange.org,  202-339-9371, (202) 905-1738 (cell)

Kids’ Caregivers Either Deported or Facing Deportation

(WASHINGTON)—As the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first markup on the immigration bill, the children and grandchildren of deported caregivers or with parents facing deportation held a vigil today on Capitol Hill as part of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement’s (FIRM) effort to improve the path to citizenship in the immigration proposal and to keep families together now.

Jacqueline Garcia, 16, of Arizona, spoke of her grandfather’s deportation in 2012. Since he had been the guardian for her and her 14-year-old brother, Jacqueline spoke of the hardship her family has faced ever since.

“I work two jobs because my grandmother is disabled and cannot work, so I have to support my family now,” said Garcia, who is a member of the FIRM group Promise Arizona. “I want Congress to know how much my grandfather sacrificed for me and my brother and one day, I hope to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice so I can make sure no other family is separated like mine because of a bad immigration law.”

Nushin Tarannum, 12, of New York state spoke of how her family has suffered since her father, Abul Kashem, was taken into custody by immigration officials in February 2012. Kashem left his native Bangladesh because he was the victim of violence and torture.

“My mother is sick, she cannot work to support us,” Tarannum said, who was born in the U.S. “My family gets help from friends and other family members but sometimes we only eat one meal a day. I am heartbroken, my family is devastated, over the separation of my father.”

Tarannum, a member of the FIRM group the New York Immigrant Coalition, had this message for the Senators: “Please, I ask you, to grant my father forgiveness. Everyone deserves a second chance. My family is suffering greatly without him.”

Members of the faith community also attended the vigil and Rev. Randy Mayer with the Arizona-Sonora Border Coalition spoke of the need for a clear and direct path to citizenship without triggers.

“Faith communities living in the shadow of the border are concerned about the insatiable desire for more security,” said Mayer, Lead Minister of The Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, AZ. “We support amendments that mitigate migrant deaths in the desert, limit the drone zone and make sure there are clear oversights and accountability for Border Patrol. As people of faith in the Borderlands we embrace the diversity in our communities and call on all people to welcome and love our neighbor for the common good.”

This vigil, organized by FIRM, is an effort to increase immigrant presence in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup process. For the duration of the committee’s immigration markup, FIRM groups will have families in the Capitol, including families from committee members’ home states, and vigils outside the building, as well as daily lobby visits from families calling on Congress for a real, clear and direct path to citizenship, not an endless, unworkable obstacle course.

“For these families, immigration reform is not about politics or party preference. It’s about keeping daughters united with their mothers, about parents being able to provide for their children, and about keeping families together rather than continuing the deportations tearing families apart,” said FIRM spokesperson Kica Matos. “These families face a fierce urgency and so does our country.  With 1,100 families torn apart each day and impacted in fundamentally immoral and degrading ways because of our broken immigration system, immigration reform cannot wait.”

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