Groundswell for Reform

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Groundswell for T h e f a i t h c o m m u n i t y f i n d s i t s v o ic e o n i m m i g r a t i o n b y P att y K u pfer

In July 2008, before a crowd of thousands, Barack Obama stated, “I think it’s time for a president who won’t walk away from something as important as comprehensive [immigration] reform just because it becomes politically unpopular…I will make it a top priority in my first year as the president of the United States of America.” One year later he is the president of the United States, and immigrant families are desperately hoping he’ll follow through on that promise. In fact, they are doing more than hoping. Immigrants and their allies, particularly in the faith community, are working increasingly closely to build the momentum that will keep immigration reform on the 2009 agenda.

new destinations, helps explain why this has become such a major issue. The current population of unauthorized immigrants has grown to approximately 12 million, representing almost one-third of the entire foreign-born population in the United States, and one of out five workers in the labor market.The population’s dispersal to “new immigrant states” has transformed this issue from a debate affecting six “gateway” states to one affecting nearly all our states. Although some expected these tensions to explode in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, most of the immediate backlash focused on people, both foreignand US-born, of Middle Eastern backgrounds. Not until 2005 and 2006 did anger over illegal immigration from Latin America begin to boil over. “Minutemen” volunteers camped out at the US-Mexico border to “protect our sovereignty against the invasion.” Talk radio and cable television shows have tapped into populist rage and elevated illegal immigration to a major issue among cultural conservatives.

The fallout No one thinks passing immigration legislation will be easy. In fact, many of us are still scarred from the debate in 2007, when a reform bill went down in flames on the floor of the US Senate. Immigrant families, advocates, and many in the religious community watched in dismay as the legislation became increasingly restrictive and angry callers decrying “amnesty” shut down the Senate phone system. Some of these same people went on to feel the fallout of failed immigration policy later that year when, in the absence of immigration reform, the Bush administration began stepping up the deportation of immigrant workers in headline-grabbing workplace raids that netted hundreds of immigrants at a time. Images on the network news of helicopters flying over meatpacking plants, of immigrant workers being shackled and taken to jail by the hundreds, have left many people of faith at a loss to understand our government’s priorities. As devastating as these raids were, they were a wake-up call to many Christians, highlighting the urgency and fear immigrants feel about being torn away from a child or wondering if a spouse would come home from work. The raids forced us to draw a moral line in the sand and decide on which side we were going to stand.

Beware of conventional wisdom Despite the passion and organization of anti-immigrant activists, public support for a practical approach to fixing the broken immigration system is actually quite strong. Not only do most Americans want action, but the majority agree that the most effective solution is comprehensive immigration reform, the key elements of which includes enforcement at the borders and in the workplace, coupled with an earned legalization component for unauthorized immigrants already in the United States and reform of the legal immigration system for those admitted in the future. Multiple independent polls taken over the past three years make this clear: Approximately 60 percent of voters favor comprehensive reform, while approximately 35 percent favor an enforcement-only or enforcement-first approach.1 Contrary to conventional wisdom, support for comprehensive reform is just as strong with swing voters in swing regions of the country and not an exclusive feature of blue states. This support was evident in the results of last November’s election. First, Latino and immigrant voters turned out in record numbers and are credited with “swinging” Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Florida toward Obama, giving them newfound political clout among politicians who always

Talk radio and “the invasion” In many communities around the country, standing on the side of undocumented immigrants can feel like a lonely place. The nation’s recent history of immigration, with the numbers growing rapidly and immigrants fanning out to

PRISM 2009

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