A project of the Center for Community Change

immigrants

Immigrant Families Launch Bus Tour to Tell Stories of Broken System

Posted by Alesia on February 25, 2013

Immigrant Families Launch Bus Tour to Tell Stories of Broken System

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, February 25, 2013 Contact: For English-Speaking Media: Donna De La Cruz, ddelacruz@communitychange.org, 202-339-9331, 202-441-3798 (cell)

For Spanish-Speaking Media: Ricardo Ramirez, rramirez@communitychange.org (202) 905-1738

More than 500 families will visit 19 states and 100 congressional districts to call for a path to citizenship for 11 million aspiring citizens

CHICAGO – Families torn apart by the immigration system and immigrant rights activists gathered in Chicago today to launch the Keeping Families Together Story Tour. The tour will elevate the voices of families that have been splintered because of our patchwork of failed immigration policies.

Over the next three weeks, more than 500 family members will join the tour and travel more than 20,000 miles to demand immigration reform. The

Keeping Families Together Story Tour was launched by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a coalition of the largest grassroots immigrant rights organizations. FIRM has issued a March 21st deadline to the Senate to introduce a comprehensive immigration bill that contains a path to citizenship.

“For the 25 days from February 25th to the March 21st deadline, Senators will hear stories of separated spouses doing their best to raise their families, children left in foster care because their parents were deported, families who don’t know when they will be reunited again,” said FIRM spokesperson Kica Matos. “Senators need to hear the voices of people, not just politicians, when they are crafting this extremely important bill.”

The stories will be highlighted daily, starting February 25th, on the Keeping Families Together storytelling website and the FIRM Facebook page.

As the buses wind through every region of the country, families will tell their stories that illustrate the urgent need for reform. In Chicago, Jennifer Martinez, a young mother from Manitowoc, WI, talked about her husband’s deportation to Mexico last year.  Martinez is now working two jobs to support her four young children.

“It breaks my heart to see my kids pray every night for their father to come home,” said Martinez. “I hope that President Obama is successful in his goal of providing a path to citizenship – but I also have learned that it’s hard to have faith in the same people and policies that broke my family. This tour is an opportunity to share our stories with both elected officials and our own community.”

Artists and poets will join the tour as well, including astronaut Jose Hernandez and singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona.

The tour will travel through seven regions: Southwest (California, Arizona, Nevada), Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana), Mountain West (Colorado), Great Lakes (Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio), New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island), Mid Atlantic (New York) and the Southeast (Florida, North Carolina).

Families who cannot travel with the bus can participate in a virtual bus tour by sharing their stories at www.keepingfamiliestogether.net or www.familiasunidasahora.net.

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DailyKos: Put Immigration Reform Back on the Agenda

Posted by Rachel L. on March 17, 2009

Yesterday there was a great post up on Daily Kos laying out the reasons why immigration reform should be on the White House agenda for this year. Touching on Luis Gutierrez’s Family Unity tour, the post argues why it is not only morally right to push through reform, but also politically salient. flic-rally-4

People who live in some of the states most affected by immigration are fully supportive of comprehensive immigration reform, and not just Latinos and Asians, but across the board including whites. There is little appetite overall for the Minuteman agenda. Remember, even Republicans nominated John McCain — author of the last immigration reform bill — as their nominee, despite facing primary opponents trying to one-up each other on their anti-immigrant rhetoric. The issue simply doesn’t have electoral bite.

Well, at least it doesn’t hurt us. Republicans have much more to fear: If it were to pass, 11-15 million undocumented immigrants (no one knows for sure the exact number) would eventually be able to vote. For reference, an estimated 12 million Latinos voted in 2008. Republicans won’t want to flood the electorate with new voters from a demographic that voted for Obama 67-32 percent, not when their current efforts are doing nothing but further alienate Latinos.

But that’s a crass electoral calculus, and it cuts both ways. Democrats can do the right thing and also help themselves politically. It’s a no-brainer.

Click here to read the full post at DailyKos.

You guys sensing a pattern here? More and more people are joining in the call for comprehensive reform. All I have to say is; it’s about time!

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When the Extreme Becomes Mainstream

Posted by Rachel L. on September 30, 2008

Last week, I mentioned a recent Pew Hispanic Center Study which found that 1 in 10 Latinos has been stopped and asked about their immigration status by police or other authorities.

While this is certainly the most shocking statistic to come out of the study, it is only the tip of the iceberg for Latinos living in this country.

From the Huffington post:

One in seven Latinos are reporting ethnic discrimination in finding or keeping a job and 10% said the same thing about housing. But the most stunning finding is that nearly one-in-ten Hispanic adults–native-born US citizens and immigrants alike–report that, in the past year, the police or other authorities have stopped them and asked them about their immigration status. One in ten Latinos were stopped and asked for “papers.” What can that statistic represent other than a gross abuse of power by federal and local authorities?

Vicious public denunciations of undocumented, brown-skinned immigrants — once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists — are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, media pundits, and politicians and are surely fueling the problems that Latinos are facing.

While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as ‘invaders,’ ‘criminal aliens,’ and ‘cockroaches.’

The hate speech that is fueling the current anti-migrant fervor has somehow left the area of “hard core” or “extremist” thought and trickled into the mainstream, becoming pervasive on shows like Lou Dobbs Tonight or Bill O’Reilly and pushed by hate groups like FAIR.

We must stand up to the powers that want to dehumanize and entire portion of the population.

Living in fear of deportation and discrimination and worrying about your livelihood and safety is no way to live and it’s certainly not how Americans expect to live. In fact, it’s the sort of life that our forefathers sought to protect us from. Debate, discussion, and disagreement around the pressing immigration issue are natural, legitimate, and necessary. Hate, fear and vitriol rhetoric are not.

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