Associated Press: Widening, Diverse Movement Calls for Immigration Reform

America's Voice Blog

Posted 11/30/09 at 10:27am

crowd If you were still in a tryptophan-induced turkey coma when the Associated Press published this piece last weekend, you should check it out today. In “Immigration reform activists diversifying ranks,” Suzanne Gamboa reports on the widening movement to pass real immigration reform:

With the 2010 election year looming, Democrat Barack Obama in the White House and increasing numbers of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders in Congress, many groups, including the NAACP, are working harder in the traditionally Latino-led movement, sensing a fresh opportunity to overhaul laws affecting millions of immigrants, both legal and illegal.

"For far too long, the Latino population in the U.S. has really borne the brunt of the anti-immigrant sentiment," said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y. Washington NAACP bureau director Hillary Shelton said: "The immigration debate needs to have, in addition to a Latino face, it needs to have a Haitian face. It needs to have an Asian face."

Unquestionably, the immigration issue is a temperature's-rising matter; opinions are strong, in some cases ranging to demands to close the borders. And no small part of the renewed impetus for revamping the system are the increasing immigrant crackdowns.

A New York Times editorial on immigration reform published on Thanksgiving Day takes on those crackdowns:

A bedrock premise of smart immigration reform is the sharp distinction it draws between criminal aliens and Americans-in-waiting. While it acknowledges that illegal immigrants need to get right with the law, it treats illegal status as a civil matter to be resolved by the machinery of naturalization, not by the police and prisons.

To hard-line opponents of legalization, illegal immigrants are irredeemable lawbreakers by definition, and the only thing they should be waiting for is deportation.

The administration’s job, as it works on a long-overdue reform bill next year, is to resist that view.

According to the same Associated Press article:

Against this backdrop, the collection of voices clamoring for overhaul is expanding — Caribbean-Americans, evangelical churches, labor unions and law enforcement, besides the NAACP. And businesses, too, are becoming increasingly active.

A diverse, growing movement for real immigration reform is something to keep celebrating this week.

According to Joshua Holland at AlterNet, even Lou Dobbs wants in on the action.