The tens of thousands of mostly Latino immigrants who came to our nation’s capital this past Sunday delivered a resounding message to our nation’s leaders: First, stop treating us, as if we were a threat or a burden to the country. And second, stop the promises and deliver an immigration reform that once and for all fixes all the wrongs of our current law. More than the fancy printed signs that were available by the tens of thousands, the hand-written messages poignantly communicated our demands: Stop Deportations, Stop the Raids, We Are Not Criminals, No Human Being Is Illegal.. The lead organizers of the march had been worried about the number of people that would ultimately turn out. The outcome greatly exceeded the original expectations which tells us is that immigrant communities are willing to keep demanding real solutions.
After all, it is immigrant communities who are on the receiving end of the wrong policies now in place; the very policies the Obama Administration insists on enforcing even more vigorously than the Bush Administration. The result is a veritable human tragedy: over 380,000 people deported during the last fiscal year, most of them Latin Americans (especially Mexicans); over 30,000 immigrants kept in detention facilities on any given night, millions of spouses and children who remain in the never ending visa petition back-logs, hundreds of deaths at our Southern border as a result of our nearly militarized border with Mexico; and millions of people who daily toil in our midst and are often exploited to make our lives more comfortable yet are denied full membership in this society.
These examples, and many other perhaps less dramatic, are what compel immigrants, particularly from Mexico, Central American and Caribbean nations, to come to DC for an opportunity to exercise our first amendment rights and tell our national policy makers; that we are fed up with promises. We want concrete actions to be taken that at a minimum translate into relief for immigrant communities. Immigrant communities and our supporters want President Obama at the very least to reorient the actions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and focus attention on drug and human trafficking mafias, instead of going after largely law abiding and hard working, tax-paying immigrants who have been denied the possibility of accessing legal permanent residency status. President Obama can put an end to the collaborative agreements between DHS and local police departments. President Obama can instruct its Department of Justice to vigorously and effectively go after rogue local law enforcement officials such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County in Arizona. These are minimally the kinds of actions President Obama can take using his Executive discretionary power and not hide behind excuses about Congressional inaction.
Without directly saying so, the marchers, by and large, rejected the notion that out of status immigrants, victims of a long obsolete and profoundly inhumane immigration law, should be criminalized in order to be considered eligible for an adjustment of status program that would allow them to become legal permanent residents and eventually U.S. citizens. The vast majority of those who came to Washington, DC on March 21 know very well how vital and integral we are to the United States of America. The only reason why so many immigrants live and work for so long in the U.S. without the proper immigration status is because the law itself has been for too long divorced from reality. Our federal policy makers have been systematically failing to do their job, and consequently the existing law has only become more and more obsolete and inhumane.
The Friday before the big rally in DC, Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Graham (R-SC) published an Op-ed in the Washington Post about a framework for immigration policy reform. Chances are that most immigrants who came to march on Sunday had not read the content of the mentioned Op-ed. But if they had, they would have rejected it given that the basic tenor of the Op-ed is that today’s immigrants are a threat that has to be contained. The truth is that most Americans who actually know an immigrant person in the form of their auto mechanic, their nanny, their gardener, their children’s class mate, their waiter or waitress in their favorite restaurant, or just their co-worker; do not see us as a threat at all. Therefore, our Senators seem to be out of touch with how real people view immigrants in our midst.
The framework unveiled by Senators Schumer and Graham does not fix the heart of the brokenness in our current immigration system. Rather, it adds layers of the same misguided, wasteful and punitive policies. Additionally, the framework lay out by Senators Schumer and Graham fully ignores the factors that have led and continue to lead so many people around the world, and most certainly in Mexico and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean to emigrate in the first place. In addition to abject poverty and lack of opportunities for most people to experience a sense of being fully realized in their potential, we live in an ever more interconnected world that constantly invite people to come to the U.S., the nation still painted as the one step before paradise. Senator Schumer and Graham do not offer anything at all about this reality. What immigrants demand is true leadership, capable of taking the nation into a truly rational and humane immigration policy, combined with bold new ideas and actions that can truly transform the countries of origin of most migrants to the point of no longer seeing in migration their only way to fulfill their economic, social, cultural and political aspirations. We need a truly new immigration policy paradigm capable of serving the interest of the American people, as well as the interests of migrant communities in a way that is congruent with 21st century realities.
