San José, CA – On May 1, more than 1000 people marched for immigrant rights through the Chicano, Mexicano and Asian neighborhoods of the east side of San José. Unions, church groups, immigrant rights organizations, students and Filipino community groups marched more than two and half miles to downtown San José, where the ending rally was held. Signs supporting immigration reform and calling for an end to deportations were mixed in the farmworker union flag, religious portraits. There were also demands for justice for an undocumented day laborer who was shot in the back and killed by police, and to allow the return of an undocumented mother who was deported.

#SanJoséCA #MayDay #immigrantRights #immigrationReform #NoMasDeportaciones

Grand Rapids, MI – More than 200 immigrants and their supporters marched for immigrant rights on Aug. 24. Mexican, Central American and Caribbean groups and families united in Lincoln Park on the Northwest side of Grand Rapids at noon. Leaders from religious, union and community groups spoke and then led a march through the neighborhood to protest outside the Republican Party headquarters. After chanting and singing, the protesters marched the mile back to the park for a cookout and party.

Carlos Gutierrez of Saint Joseph the Worker Parish spoke through a megaphone to the crowd saying, “Millions of immigrants that live in our country did not just come here for a vacation. They came here for their very survival, because they had no other alternative. War, violence, economic and social discrimination, racism, and political repression, are driving people and families out of their countries looking for security and a better future.”

Gutierrez continued, “We have dehumanized our immigrant brothers and sisters and we have forgotten our common human bond. We forget about all the women who travel so bravely to unite their families in the U.S. The mothers who see their sons and daughters leaving home, the mothers who pray that they will return one day, worried that their children might disappear or even be killed. The wives who stay home and keep their family together while their husbands are forced to leave and make great sacrifices to find work in the U.S. Don’t forget the children who grow up without their fathers at home because the fathers had to immigrate to earn money. Remember the sadness of the families who cannot even be united at a funeral, when a loved one dies back at home and they cannot return because of the broken immigration system. There are no strangers here; we are all one family, the family of God.”

Lindsey Rosa of Peace, Hope and Love Forever, spoke about the struggles of undocumented immigrants as the number of deportations continues to rise. Rosa said, “We are coming together on the 50th anniversary March on Washington D.C. We are marching today in solidarity with tens of thousands marching from coast to coast. We are also marching in solidarity with the spirit of Martin Luther King and with all those who have fought for justice throughout history, with Gandhi and with Rigoberta Menchu, with people both known and unknown.”

Rosa ended by saying, “I want to remember today, those who are currently undocumented and living in fear, and stress and anxiety, and those who cannot be here because they have been deported. We still remember and love them. We still continue to fight so this does not continue to happen…the universal fight for justice is the only true and honorable thing a person can do with their life. I know we will continue to fight until immigration reform is realized.”

West Michigan Coalition for Immigration Reform organized the protest and march.

#GrandRapidsMI #RepublicanAgenda #immigrationRights #immigrationReform #legalizationForAll

On Thursday, June 27th, the U.S. Senate passed an immigration reform bill by a 68 to 32 margin. The Legalization For All (L4A) network strongly condemns the inclusion of the Corker-Hoever amendment in the Senate immigration reform bill. The Corker-Hoever amendment will increase militarization on the border, expand the E-verify workplace enforcement, and try to track the more than one hundred and fifty million people who enter the United States each year.

The Senate bill that passed calls for an additional $46 billion to further militarize the border, including 20,000 more border patrol officers, hundreds of miles of new fencing, and mandates use of military technology. This will mainly be felt by Mexicans and Central Americans trying to cross the border, leading to more deaths.

In response to this military “surge” on the border, more and more of our brothers and sisters living on or near the border, especially in Texas and Arizona are saying that this is no longer an immigration reform bill, but a border militarization bill. In solidarity with our sisters and brothers on and near the border, Legalization For All cannot support the Senate bill that passed.

Since the beginning of this year’s struggle for immigration reform, L4A has stood on principles based on what the people need. We have called for legalization for all now! – don’t exclude millions of undocumented and make them wait ten years for legal permanent residency. L4A has opposed the proposals for more and more militarization of the border and supported calls to stop the deportations.

While the original “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (CIR) bill put forward by the Senate bipartisan “gang of eight” did grant temporary residency to most (but not nearly all) of the eleven million undocumented, it had a ten year wait for permanent residency. In addition the original CIR bill put more border militarization first, restructured legal immigration to emphasize work, education, and speaking English above family reunification, expanded temporary worker programs, and increased government monitoring of workers. And it said nothing about deportations, which continue at a record pace.

But then the Senate Democratic leadership followed a strategy of making the bill worse in order to attract some handfuls of Republican votes. The Senate bill has now gone from bad to worse with the Corker-Hoever amendment. In the House of Representatives there is no bipartisan CIR bill, and Republican House leader Boenher said that he would not bring forward the Senate bill unless the majority of Republicans in the House support it. Given that the Senate bill doesn’t even have the majority of Senate Republicans (who tend to be more moderate than Republicans in the House), it is quite possible that there will be no House immigration reform bill.

Legalization For All is putting out a call for a week of action and a national call-in day to congress when the House comes back from their holiday break on Monday, July 8th. We demand that Congress put forward a bill that has legalization for all, reduces, not increases, border militarization, and stops the deportations! If you wish to join us in this effort, please contact your local L4A network member.

#UnitedStates #immigrationReform #legalizationForAll #USSenate

Minneapolis, MN – Protesters rallied in downtown Minneapolis on April 10, a national day of action to demand that politicians in Washington D.C. take action now for immigrant rights. The Minneapolis protest was organized by a coalition of unions, immigrant rights organizations and religious groups. Speakers emphasized that the time is now for immigration reform, and that the reform must not leave immigrant workers in a second class status.

#MinneapolisMN #immigrationReform

Fight Back! interviewed veteran Chicano activist Carlos Montes on the fight to win legalization for undocumented immigrants. Montes is a longtime fighter in the struggle for immigrant rights. Fight Back!: Why is the struggle for legalization for the undocumented so important right now?

Carlos Montes: The struggle for legalization is very important now because immigrants, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, have been suffering tremendous hardships. The deportations, long detentions, police-ICE harassment and raids have caused extreme hardship for the masses of families who live in daily fear. These attacks have been exceptionally focused and hard on Mexicans and Central Americans, since they count for more than 90% of all deportations, and have high rates of incarceration and deaths on the border. On top of all this they face oppressive conditions in public schools, oppression in the work place, with low pay for long hours and poor working conditions, often without benefits or health care.

Fight Back!: There is growing discussion of so-called ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ by politicians in Washington D.C. Is this what the community needs? If not, what demands does the immigrant rights movement need to put forward?

Montes: The community needs a fundamental change to the current oppressive immigration situation. The large Latino vote turnout showed that Latino voters want Obama to work on immigration along with job and other bread and butter issues. The immigrant rights movement needs to continue to put forward the most principled, advanced and progressive demands, such as legalization for all, no more repression on the border and in the workplace, and no guest worker program. We cannot let the politicians set the agenda and the platform of reform, because they will vacillate and compromise for a weak reform that serves the interests of big business and not the community.

Fight Back!: What is the connection between the struggle for immigrant rights and the struggle of Chicanos for self-determination and full equality?

Montes: The fight for immigrant rights is a fundamental part of our struggle for self-determination and full equality. We don’t just want a green card, we want our freedom! The history of the U.S. is a history of oppression and annexation of the Chicano/Mexicano people, our land, labor and culture! Fighting for immigrants’ rights is just a step in our ongoing fight for self-determination, economic and political power and freedom from the chains of U.S. imperialism.

Fight Back!: How can the movement win the struggle for immigrant rights?

Montes: Mass organizing, mass protests, civil disobedience and every tactic and form of protest is valid. Change will only come about if we force the politicians to change. In Los Angeles we organized, protested and forced the L.A. city chief of police and mayor to change the car confiscation policy by police who targeted immigrants without licenses. Real genuine reform has historically only come about when the people demanded it and took action. As in the historic Chicano movement when we organized the East L.A. walkouts demanding quality public education, an end to racism in the schools and Chicano Studies, and the mass anti-war protest of the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War.

More recently undocumented youth, the so-called Dreamers, took militant actions that pushed the Obama administration to grant temporary residency known as DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]. Now is the time to unite and move into action. Many forces are already moving and taking action, everyone should do something in their community. But the key is to base our work among the poor and working class as they are the ones who will stand firm. They should lead this movement – not the politicians, nonprofits, or intellectuals. What poor and working class will unite and fight for is full legalization for all and not a compromise that puts up barriers to legalization while increasing the repression of immigrants.

#UnitedStates #CarlosMontes #ChicanoLiberation #immigrationRights #immigrationReform #legalizationForAll

San José, CA – On Jan. 29, one day after a group of eight U.S. Senators announced their bipartisan proposal for immigration reform, President Obama made his own proposal. While the President’s proposal was better than the bipartisan Senate proposal in several areas, in particular calling for recognition of same-sex partners of U.S. citizens or legal residents who are seeking legal residency; overall it offered the same approach of harsh treatment of the undocumented and a pro-business approach.

President Obama, like the eight senators, used language that called for more militarization of the border and suggesting that the undocumented are potential criminals and terrorists. One improvement is that the President’s proposal does not have an explicit “enforcement first” policy that could postpone legalization forever.

The president’s proposal, like the Senate's bipartisan proposal, also calls for more workplace enforcement. It also explicitly calls for a new Social Security card that comes close to being a national I.D. card.

In terms of legalization, the president and the senators are similar in terms of putting up many obstacles to legalization. One improvement is that the president’s proposal does not require employment to become a legal resident. However, the president’s proposal does require college or military service for faster legalization of undocumented who came as children. But with only about one of three Latino youth attending college, the other two-thirds will feel pressure to join the military in order to legalize and be forced into U.S. military intervention and wars abroad.

The president’s proposal does call for a temporary increase and more flexibility in family reunification visas to try to shorten the waiting lists. But he also calls for a permanent increase in employment visas and eliminating all country caps. Why not do the same for family visas, when it is clear that a long term reduction in undocumented immigration can only happen if there is a permanent increase in family reunification visas?

Last, but not least, there is no mention of stopping deportations now that a legalization proposal is under discussion. The president could have the power to slow or even stop the record levels of deportations that are breaking up families and sowing fear, especially in Chicano, Mexicano and Central American communities.

#SanJoséCA #ImmigrantsRights #militaryRecruitment #Deportation #PresidentObama #immigrationReform

San José, CA – On Monday, January 28, a bipartisan group of eight Senators, four Democrats and four Republicans, announced a framework for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” or CIR. On Jan. 29, President Obama will be putting out his position, marking the beginning of an effort to “reform” U.S. immigration law this year.

Unfortunately the Senate proposal is not what the community needs and justice demands; indeed, it is often quite the opposite. Instead of legalization for all, the proposal resorts to wording reserved for criminals, saying that the undocumented had to “pay their debt to society” through a background check, fines and back taxes. Those who pass, and have paid taxes would get a temporary visa and still not be eligible for government benefits. They would have to learn English and civics just to apply for legal residency, which is not the case for other immigrants.

In addition, the proposal says that the undocumented who manage to get by all these obstacles would have to wait until everyone who was waiting in line gets their legal residency. With some of the waiting lists for visa lasting twenty years or more, this could mean that the undocumented would have to wait for an entire generation for legalization.

Even worse, the proposal says that the undocumented must show a history of work and current employment to get legal permanent residency. Thus those who apply for a temporary visa in hopes of permanent residency must keep a job in order to qualify. What this would do would turn the undocumented into a huge group of foreign workers who must accept any job at any wage in order to get permanent legal residency in the United States. This is not a legalization program; this appears to be a mammoth -numbering in the millions – guest workers program.

Over the past fifteen years, deportations have soared from about 20,000 a year during President Clinton’s first term to around 400,000 a year today. This has split up thousands of families. The militarization of the border has increased, causing thousands of people to die trying to cross into the United States. The number of undocumented has actually dropped from about 14 million five years ago to about 11 million today.

Yet the Senate proposal insists on the worn and inhumane “enforcement first” doctrine, saying that no undocumented would get legal residency until the borders are certified as “secure”. The proposal goes further, in calling for the development of tracking system for everyone entering the United States on temporary (tourist, student, etc.) visas by plane or ship. While past enforcement has mainly been aimed at Mexican and Central Americans coming over the border, this proposal would target more Asians and South Americans who make up a growing minority of undocumented immigrants.

The Senate proposal also calls for an expansion of employment verification of legal status. While the proposal does not explicitly call for a national identification card, it does state that they “believe requiring prospective workers to demonstrate both legal status and identity, through non-forgeable electronic means prior to obtaining employment,” which sounds like a national identification card to me.

The Senate proposal, while coming down hard on undocumented workers and their families, wants to make it easier for business to get all the workers that they want. The proposal calls for granting legal residency to foreign students who get a Masters or PhD in science, math, and engineering from U.S. universities. It calls for expanding temporary worker programs for agriculture, low-skilled jobs, and indeed any business that says that they can’t get American workers.

The proposal does call for easing the legalization of undocumented who came as children and for agricultural workers. This shows the importance of the militant and mass struggle waged by undocumented youth to pass a DREAM act and eventually led to the President’s order for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. But given all the hurtful policies proposed, it would be better to have narrow bill for speeding legalization of these groups, and in particular the DACA undocumented youth, than a “comprehensive” bill that does much harm. In addition the bipartisan proposal mentions the need to reduce the waiting list for legal immigration, which is the key to limiting unauthorized entries in the future. However there is absolutely nothing specific mentioned, unlike the other proposals, making it more likely that the Senators are paying lip service to the idea.

Last but not least, there are many important policies that the bipartisan proposal does not mention. There is no mention of stopping the deportations that are breaking up families and traumatizing whole communities. There is no mention of changing the immigration policy to recognize the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) people.

The Senate bipartisan proposal reflects the problems of top-down immigration reform, where business interests, the agricultural industry, and anti-immigrant forces have more influence than working people in the community. In order to win immigration reform that does more to help and not more to hurt immigrants, their families, and their communities, a bigger and more militant mass movement is needed. A central part of this will be response of Chicanos, Mexicanos, and Central Americans who have been hit the hardest by immigration injustice in this country. But it is also important that Asian Americans, South Americans, Arab Americans, and others with large immigrant population become more active in the struggle for justice for immigrants.

#SanJoséCA #immigrationReform #comprehensiveImmigrationReform #legalizationForAll

Two years ago, the DREAM Act – which would legalize some immigrant youth who go to college or join the military – passed the House and came within five votes of passing the Senate, with every Republican and five Democrats voting against it. After shutting that effort down, now Senator John McCain (AZ) and retiring Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Jon Kyl (AZ) have introduced a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act they’ve dubbed the “Achieve Act.”

Immigrant rights activists quickly dismissed the Achieve Act as unacceptable. Some have dubbed the Republicans’ alternative to be the “nightmare version” of the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act itself has gone through several increasingly restrictive iterations over the years, in an attempt by Democrats to woo more Republicans to support it. Those efforts to woo Republican support via more restriction and repression have so far failed, though after the recent election the Republicans are again open to discuss immigration bills that include some mix of repression and legalization.

The new Republican Achieve Act is even more restrictive than the most recent version of the DREAM Act. It would funnel more youth into the military and make it harder for them to go to college. It would also never allow immigrants to get citizenship, only residency.

Another immigration bill the Republicans introduced in the lame duck session is a pro-business bill that would grant green cards to immigrants who get high tech advanced degrees in U.S. universities. Up to 55,000 immigrants could get visas annually if they’re in advanced degree science, technology, engineering or math fields. But it would not allow the total number of immigrants to increase; on the contrary the proposal would also eliminate the diversity visa lottery, which grants 50,000 green cards a year to immigrants from countries that don’t have a large number of immigrants in the U.S. The diversity visa lottery is one of the few avenues open for African immigration to the U.S. as well as immigration from some other underrepresented countries. Almost half of the 50,000 diversity visas go to immigrants from Africa and almost a quarter of all immigrants from African entered through the diversity program in 2011.

This focus on work visas, particularly for highly educated, high-skilled immigrants, at the expense of visas for immigrants from underrepresented countries and for lower-skilled immigrant workers, is the general approach that big business wants in immigration reform. The Republican proposal to push currently undocumented youth into a military track while preventing them from ever getting citizenship appears to be a non-starter, an attempt to juggle between big business interests and the Republicans' rabidly anti-immigrant base while trying to sound like they aren’t anti-immigrant.

President Obama and congressional Democrats are unlikely to give these Republican bills a hearing, as Democrats are publicly announcing plans to push for “comprehensive immigration reform” in the upcoming regular congressional session. They are planning to pick up where their last stalled comprehensive proposal left off, with a bill that would have a mix of increased repressive measures like a more militarized border and increased “interior enforcement” of immigration laws and a guest worker program with some sort of legalization that is yet undefined in scope or process. Immigrant rights activists are preparing to push for immigration reform legislation that legalizes all immigrant workers and that doesn’t increase repressive measures against immigrants or expand a guest worker program.

#WashingtonDC #DREAMAct #immigrationReform #AchieveAct