Immigrant advocates from all segments of society are urging President Obama and Congress to seize the moment and take quick action on immigration reform.
DREAM Act students, religious and labor movement leaders, are all stepping up efforts to make sure that this historic opportunity to resolve what so far has been an intractable crisis is not wasted.
DREAMers, who have shown time and time again their willingness to be at the forefront of the fight for immigrant rights, celebrated the week of the Presidential inauguration with a flurry of events across the country pushing elected officials in Washington to take immediate action.
"This week is the perfect time to send a clear message to President Obama and Congress: work together to pass immigration reform that creates a path to citizenship for our entire community and put an end to deportations that are tearing our families apart," Myrna Orozco, national field director for United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led movement in the nation, said last week.
Here in our area last Tuesday, the Long Island Immigrant Students Advocates and 12 other community organizations braved freezing temperatures to hold a rally outside Sen. Chuck Schumer's office in Melville, L.I. "We wanted to call on Sen. Schumer, as one of the leaders of the Democratic Party in New York, to exercise leadership and work toward a comprehensive immigration reform this year," said Osmán Canales, LIISA founder and president. "We also wanted to tell him that we do not want programs that criminalize our immigrant community."
Similar events took place in Texas, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, California, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Kentucky as part of the United We Dream Inauguration Week of Action.
Religious leaders from the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a partnership of faith-based organizations committed to enacting fair and humane immigration reform, also took action. In what was billed as a National Faith Call-In Day, more than 1,000 faith leaders from diverse traditions made phone calls to their Senators last Wednesday with a similar message: Pass immigration reform in 2013. Such reform, they said, must "prioritize family unity and provide a pathway to full citizenship."
"On the heels of the President's inauguration and Dr. King's birthday, thousands of pastors, lay clergy, and people in the pews have called their Senators to urge them to enact immigration reform that prioritizes family unity and creates a pathway to full citizenship for those who, save mere papers, are Americans in heart and contribution," said Rev. John L. McCullough, executive director of Church World Service.
Eliseo Medina, International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, expressed the labor movement's sense of urgency.
"We will work with President Obama to seize this moment in history and restore justice in our immigration system. As Dr. King once instructed us, 'The time is always right to do what is right.' The time to do commonsense immigration reform is now."
For immigrants, things are beginning to look up, even in Washington. The U.S. Senate reconvened Tuesday and immigration reform appears as the top of its list of legislative priorities. A recent bipartisan poll by Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates confirmed what many previous polls had already found: a growing majority of Americans are in favor of an immigration reform plan — 77% in this case — that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
"DREAMers won't stop fighting until we win a path to citizenship for our parents, who sacrificed so much for us to have a better future," Orozco said.
They might not need to fight much longer.
aruiz@nydailynews.com
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