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In the spring of 2006, North Star Fund played a pivotal role moving donor dollars to support the massive mobilizations against HR 4437. This draconian House bill would have criminalized anyone employing or providing support and services to the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants on which our economy relies. We reported on the outcome of these mobilizations in our winter 2007 newsletter. At the time, many in the immigration rights movement believed that new leaders in Albany and Washington, backed by the large, newly-mobilized constituencies for immigration rights, would be pushing for comprehensive immigration reform that was fair and family-friendly.
That push came in early May—in the form of a plan introduced by Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.). A more conservative bipartisan compromise hit the floor later in the month. Even though President Bush championed the compromise, it failed twice—shot down for the final time on June 28.
As soon as the rumblings of the immigration reform bill started, North Star Fund got busy organizing funding. Thanks in part to our partnership with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, we provided $35,500 in Rapid Response grants to groups working for fair and equitable immigration reform. The grants allowed the groups to quickly inform their membership about the bill, and to work together to include the voice of grassroots immigrant communities in the debate.
To get a handle on what’s next for the immigration rights movement, North Star Fund went back to three people interviewed for the winter newsletter article: Miguel Ramirez, with Immigrant Communities in Action, Aarti Shahani with Families for Freedom, and Chung-Wha Hong of the New York Immigration Coalition. In addition, we spoke with Queer Immigrant Rights Project (QuIR), who received their first North Star Fund grant in December 2006. QuIR organizes and supports LGBT immigrants, who can face isolation within their own immigrant
communities.
Human Rights and Needs Ignored
After the mass mobilization in 2006, and the long years of hard work before and after, many in the immigration rights movement thought a satisfactory bill might be at hand.
But then the fine print dried.
Miguel Ramirez of Immigrant Communities in Action relates, “We had a sad scenario when we discussed the specifics of the bills with our constituents—excessive penalties and fees, incarceration, a wall between Mexico and the USA, family separation—and the slim possibility to improve the bill through debate.”
Indeed, the extreme right had pushed hard to skew the debate and engineer a bill that broadcasted reform, but created inequality and heartbreak. The debate is complex, but these are the broad outlines:
Path to Citizenship: An estimated 60 plus percent of Americans support a fair and equitable bill with a clear path to citizenship. The bill did offer a path, but one that involved heavy fines and onerous, risky trips back to the immigrant’s country of origin.
Family Unity: Family unity has always been a major focus of immigrant rights. Disregarding family values, the Right, including Bush, used the dehumanizing term “chain migration” to describe family unity. The bill eliminated a family-based policy for granting green cards and replaced it with a point system that favored higher education, work skills, and English-language proficiency. And deportation orders under current laws would have remained in place.
Workplace Rights: The bill created a guest worker program that featured a similar point system to the one for green cards. It allowed employers to import workers, pay them less than minimum wage, and deport them without due process. Guest workers would have had no right to organize in the workplace.
Heavier Policing: The militarization of our borders would have continued. The bill increased the border patrol by almost a third: from 13,000 to 18,000 agents, and ramped up the number of watchtowers and fences along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Immigrant rights groups were horrified. Says Chung-Wha Hong, “The bill became such a monster. In the mainstream it was promoted as a pro-immigration bill. In reality, it was anti-family, anti-worker and anti-American.”
Aarti Shahani reinforced this point. Families for Freedom organizes immigrant communities and families with members who face deportation. According to Shahani, “The bill didn’t take anyone off the deportation lists. The unjust deportation system would continue to destroy families.”
Public health was also at stake. According to QuIR, “Our communities would wait longer to seek health care services, such as HIV/AIDS medications, for fear of being detained.” Similar fears would reverberate for other undocumented immigrants needing to access social or medical services.
What’s Next?
Leaders of the groups that North Star Fund supports are agreeing that an overall immigration bill may not be the best approach. According to Shahani, “People are pushing comprehensive immigration reform at high costs. But a piecemeal approach may be better. In recent years, anti-immigrant measures have passed by slipping small bills into larger ones.”
In a similar vein, Hong says, “This will not be a time when we push for a single legislative bill. We need to do deeper and wider movement building. Even though millions of people came out to support immigration rights, we have so much more work to do to make grassroots action sustainable.”
Grassroots organizing always begins in local communities. Says Ramirez, “We have to keep the pressure on. We will have to take the fight to our neighborhoods, towns, cities and states because the local governments are taking the initiative in the wake of the Congressional impasse.”
According to Chung-Wha Hong, “Here in New York, immigrants do have significant local power. New York City has the responsibility to practice pro-active local policies as an antidote to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies being enacted elsewhere. And anti-immigrant sentiment is alive and well in Long Island and other parts of New York where anti-immigrant ordinances have been floated. We have to be ready for a lot of local battles.”
Work in neighborhoods and other constituencies is central to this effort. For instance, QuIR says, “LGBTI [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex] documented and undocumented immigrants need to provide sustained and comprehensive education to mainstream LGBTI and immigrant groups. We also need to develop media messages and outreach materials to educate the larger public.”
Another form of local action is the New Sanctuary Movement, a faith-based initiative in which communities accompany and protect immigrant families facing deportation and other forms of civil rights violations. Two member families of Families for Freedom were the first to be sheltered by New York’s New Sanctuary group.
These local efforts translate to the national level by providing successful models for policies created with social justice in mind. According to Chung-Wha Hong, “The rightwing extremists communicated their vision very successfully, which is, ‘let’s deport all illegals and stop chain migration.’ Our challenge is to provide a vision of America that is strengthened by immigrants instead of treating immigrants as a liability.”
Hong, speaking for many, adds, “Our fundamental bottom lines for immigration reform have not changed. We continue our call for broad and simple legalization for immigrants; a future worker program with full rights and a clear path to citizenship; family unity; and strong protections for due process and civil rights.”
Resources
Links
Other Legislation
The drafters of the recent Senate immigration bill pulled, then compromised, many features from the following, much stronger, pieces of legislation:
The Dream Act provides a path to citizenship for the children of immigrants.
AgJobs provides a means for farmworkers to obtain legal immigration status.
Unaccompanied Alien Minor Protection Act applies the “best interests of the child” standard and gives the right to counsel to immigrant children in this country without a parent or guardian.
HR 1176, introduced by Bronx congressperson Jose Serrano, would give an immigration judge the authority to determine that the immigrant parent of a U.S. citizen should not be deported or excluded from the country.
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