FIRM Calls on Senate to Confirm Perez as New U.S. Secretary of Labor

(WASHINGTON)—The Fair Immigration Reform Movement today praised the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for approving the nomination of Tom Perez to serve as the new U.S. Secretary of Labor.

“Tom has spent his entire career as a public servant fighting to make sure that the rights of all Americans are protected and enforced,” said Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change. “As the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Tom’s story of hard work and a desire to serve his country are inspirations to everyone.”

After a brief morning session, the Senate panel voted 12-10 to approve Perez’s nomination, which now heads to the full Senate. Perez is currently head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.

“As a highly qualified leader within the Latino community and beyond, we urge the full Senate to confirm Tom so that he can move into this important position without further delay,” Bhargava said. “The President’s Cabinet should reflect the diversity of America. And Tom Perez has proven that he will make an excellent Labor Secretary.”

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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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Late Friday afternoon, one of the co-authors of the report, Jason Richwine, quietly resigned from The Heritage Foundation after it surfaced that he had written a highly racist dissertation in 2009 on the low IQ’s of Hispanic immigrants as compared to white Americans.

The Center for Community Change’s Executive Director Deepak Bhargava said this resignation, which took place “in the cover of darkness, without fully owning up to the reprehensible nature of the views,” wasn’t enough.  “This issue isn’t really that he was fired; the issue is that he was hired knowingly by Heritage with these views way out of the mainstream by the pillar institution of modern Conservatism in America,” Bhargava said on MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes on Friday.

The Heritage Foundation should take responsibility for embracing a report written by this extremist, and it is Jim DeMint who should be held accountable. Which is why today at 12pm, immigrant families and activists will be delivering thousands of pink slips to The Heritage Foundation building (214 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Washington, 20002) calling for Jim DeMint’s resignation.

It is our obligation to demand accountability.  In the words of Kica Matos, Director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at The Center for Community Change, “We cannot stand by and allow our country’s ugly history of racism and injustice to repeat itself.”

Click here to sign our petition demanding Jim DeMint to resign from Heritage!