Immigration
Through its work, Democracia Ahora strives to address the nation’s immigration challenges, end the divisiveness that has poisoned the immigration debate, and unite America as both a secure and welcoming nation.
Over the last decade, immigrants and their families, employers and workers alike, have suffered from our nation’s inability to find common ground on the issue of immigration reform. Indiscriminate immigration raids have caused trauma and hardship for thousands of individuals. Such raids separate families, destroy communities, and threaten the basic rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. A new and vast detention system has resulted in violations of basic due process rights, the deaths of immigrants—including legal permanent residents—in detention, and endangers the basic civil liberties of all Americans.
Democracia Ahora has organized to stand with the community against a patchwork of dangerous state and local immigration enforcement initiatives that have only served to damage trust among immigrant communities and law enforcement officials and undermine public safety, most notably Arizona’s new immigration law SB 1070. Enforcement-only measures, like employment verification and use of Social Security No Match letters, have placed new burdens on employers and risk doing significant harm to our federal budget and our fragile economy. The rights of workers have also been undermined by enforcement strategies that fail to take into account labor laws and the exploitation of undocumented workers. Migrants desperate for a better life continue to meet their deaths at our borders. The suffering caused by these practices and experiences underscores the problems with current U.S. immigration policies and the pressing need for reform.
What do we want? Reform that help American families and American workers, not raids that tear them apart. Mothers and fathers are being separated from their children by ill conceived workplace and residential raids. Immigrant workers and their families are living in a state of siege. But these families are “made in America,” and help make America strong. The federal government needs to refocus its efforts to targeting unscrupulous employers that are undermining the wages and working conditions of all workers. And the President and Congress need to provide the leadership to enact long-overdue reforms that will legalize immigrants, unite families, protect all workers, and restore the rule of law to our immigration system.
