After months of delays, the national campaign for immigration reform began Wednesday night. Rep. Luis Gutierrez held a national conference call which hooked up 16,000 telephone lines to a national center in Washington. While some of those phone lines were for individuals, many were to house parties from West Hempstead, New York, to East L.A. There were at least 800 house parties where people gathered to learn about immigration reform and plan action.

 

The last time immigration reform came before the Senate, the anti-immigrant groups out-phone called us by nearly 20 to 1. We can't let that happen again. We must bother our Congressional Representatives and Senators until they are sick of us.

 

Here is what you can do:

 

1. Click here and send an e-mail to your people on Capitol Hill. The computer will sort out who represents you by the address you give and the e-mail is already drafted, so it is as easy as can be.

2. Call your Congressperson next week with the simple message that we need immigration reform now. Here is the number of the Congressional Switchboard (202) 224-3121. Call it and ask for your Congressperson. After you speak to him or her, call back and talk to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand.

3. Come back to this site every week for new activities.

 

For more information on the schedule for immigration reform, check out this blog.

 

 

 

 

The anti-immigrant folks will begin their push against immigration reform with tea parties this weekend. A few days later, on November 18, we will begin the push to reform our broken immigration system.

 

A preliminary shot was fired today by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. She told a gathering at the Center For American Progress that the Obama Administration was at last ready to begin the comprehensive immigration reform effort. She said that Homeland Security has addressed many of the concerns that led members of Congress to oppose reform in 2007:

 

Marcelo Lucero was murdered a year ago by a lynch mob of seven young men next to the Long Island Rail Road station in Patchogue. His killing came after months of verbal attacks on the immigrant community by the Suffolk County Executive, Steve Levy, and other local politicians. Similar attacks by the same group of teens had been ignored as youthful pranks by the police, and immigrants had come to so mistrust their guardians that they stopped reporting crimes committed by young whites.

 

Marcelos' story might seem peculiar to Suffolk County, but we have seen elements of it here. Politicians in Putnam who try to court voters by scapegoating immigrants. A legal system in Rockland that releases a young man accused in a white supremacist beatdown of a Latino student on $1,000 bail, only to see the same young man arrested in a KKK t-shirt after making the shooting of another Latino with a pellet gun into a recreational sport.

 

The extension of Federal hate crime legislation a month ago was a fitting recommitment by our country to the notion that hate crimes divide communities and must be punished. We, as local residents, must take on the responsibility of making sure that our police and prosecutors take hate crimes seriously. We must insure that the growing list of Marcelo Luceros, half-a-dozen murdered in anti-immigrant shootings since he was killed, are not buried without our dedication to eradicate hate crimes.

 

Patrick Young, Esq.

Westchester Hispanic Coalition

Please go to Remember Marcelo Lucero to sign a petititon to help.

The White Plains Police have initiated a new program to work with immigrant victims of domestic violence. The project, which is being designed in conjuntion with the Westchester Hispanic Coalition, will train officers in the best ways to work with immigrant women who have been victimized in their own homes. The partnership also provides immigration services for these women and their children to access help under the Violence Against Women Act (VOWA) and other legislation designed to allow them to escape their abusers.

 

-Patrick Young, Esq. Westchester Hispanic Coalition

It got little notice in the press, but immigration reform took some major steps forward over the last week.

 

The Hudson Valley Community Coalition held a vigil to greet the news that Rep. Luis Gutierrez had released a set of principles to guide the immigration reform process. Apart from his reiterated support for the DREAM Act, Gutierrez drew the most attention with his legalization proposal:

 

Our immigrants are hardworking, and they are up to the challenge. Give them the opportunity to earn their citizenship, and they will go through the background checks; they will pay their fair share of taxes; and they will learn English. It’s not an easy process, but it is a fair process.

Thousands of immigrant rights supporters attended a rally backing Gutierrez's proposal.

Even more important than the rallies and the Gutierrez proposal was a vote by the conservative National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support comprehensive immigration reform, including earned legalization for the undocumented. This lynchpin of conservative politics had been on the sidelines in 2007 during the last great immigration debate. NAE support may provide some key Republican Senators with the cover they need to vote for reform.

 

-Patrick Young, Esq. Weschester Hispanic Coalition