[colombiamigra] Fw: Immigration Reform at a Dangerous Juncture

From: william mejia <wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "colombiamigra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <colombiamigra@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 22:06:11 -0700 (PDT)


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From: National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities 
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To: wmejia8a@xxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 4:36 PM
Subject: Immigration Reform at a Dangerous Juncture
 


 
 
Immigration Reform at a Dangerous Juncture
By Oscar Chacón, Executive Director, NALACC
  Since late last year, immigrant communities in the US have watched carefully, 
as first the Senate and now the House of Representatives takes up the issue of 
immigration reform. As anyone familiar with the system can attest, the country 
is in urgent need of public policies that can start to repair the many years of 
neglect that have pushed our immigration laws far out of sync with the 
realities of modern global migration.
As immigrant communities from Mexico, Central America and the rest of Latin 
America, we have listened to elected officials tout the growing importance of 
Latino voters.  In this context, we had high hopes that the US Congress would 
put an end once and for all to the toxic rhetoric about immigration, and 
recognize the multiple ways in which immigrant communities, particularly those 
who reside in the US without authorization, have generously contributed to 
economic growth and fiscal revenues at all levels of government.
Sadly, the nature of the national conversation about immigration policy reform 
and about immigrant communities has remained as poisonous as in years past. The 
most recent turn of events in the legislative process clearly demonstrates how 
twisted this process has become. In the service of achieving “Comprehensive 
Immigration Reform” at all costs, our policy makers continue to feed into the 
erroneous notion that building more walls and essentially turning the US 
southern border into a permanent war zone, is the “solution” to our broken 
immigration policy. This is both bad public policy and obscenely wasteful; 
estimates are in excess of $40 billion over the next 10 years for drones, 
walls, and other draconian measures.
Washington pundits, particularly the architects and main promoters of the 
legislative and policy strategy dubbed “Comprehensive Immigration Reform 
(CIR),” argue that these measures are part of the political compromise that 
will finally bring immigration policy reform to the finish line.  From the 
perspective of folks living outside the Washington, DC bubble, this logic is 
hard to follow.   As we see it, the goal of good public policy is taking a back 
seat to concessions to racist, xenophobic and corporate interests that have 
converged to take advantage of the immigration policy reform debate to push 
their own agendas.  If we end up with a policy that effectively shuts out many 
of the people it purports to help, while siphoning large amounts of public 
funds into private pockets, we run the risk of ending up in a worse situation 
than the one we are in now. Our country, including all its immigrant 
communities, deserves better.
Truly responsible and long lasting solutions to our nation’s immigration policy 
will require a carefully crafted suite of interventions, only a few of which 
are being addressed in the current legislative process.  For example, if our 
policy makers were truly concerned about creating conditions for more people in 
Mexico and the rest of Latin America to remain in their own countries, we 
should be addressing the factors that have pushed people to come to the US 
under far from ideal conditions.
While the final outcome of the push for CIR remains uncertain, everyone 
committed to justice, equality and the respect of basic human rights must be 
clear that there will be a lot of work ahead of us, with or without legislative 
action this year. In particular, immigrant communities across the nation will 
have to find the wisdom and the courage to address the dual challenges of 
getting the most benefit of any changes to the immigration law that may be 
enacted this year, while at the same time becoming much better organized to 
right all the wrongs that the current proposed changes will leave unaddressed. 
Furthermore, we will need to develop our capacity to address the host of new 
problems that will be engendered by such a reform. Latin American immigrant 
communities must rise to this challenge. The best guarantee of a healthy 
democracy is a highly organized and educated population able to keep our 
elected officials accountable to the people every single
 day, not just on Election Day.
National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communitites
1638 S. Blue Island
Chicago, IL 60608You are subscribed toNALACC's email list as 
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[colombiamigra] Fw: Immigration Reform at a Dangerous Juncture

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