Yesterday, we wrote about and posted pictures from the “people’s hearing” for immigration reform on the Hill. Today, Julia Preston has a great piece in the New York Times on the grassroots push for immigration legislation and how this year’s approach differs from the backroom nature of previous attempts at immigration reform. As Julia writes:
In 2007, when Congress last tried — and failed — to pass a similarly broad overhaul, much of the action by groups that supported that effort came during pitched battles over policy positions, fought largely behind closed doors. The populist momentum came from Americans who angrily opposed that proposal, which they said would give a break to immigrants they saw as lawbreakers.
This year, the forces favoring comprehensive legislation are showing new levels of confidence and organization, and, in a change from six years ago, illegal immigrants and their American citizen family members, like Ms. Garcia, are stepping forward to speak for themselves…
Immigrant groups, having learned from the bruising they took in 2007, and in immigration fights since then in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and other states, this time are staying clear of the policy weeds in Washington, instead working their way toward this city from the outside…
“We’ve spent the last five years building a lot of strength in the field,” said Ryan Bates, director of the Alliance for Immigrants Rights and Reform, a Michigan group. “We have political infrastructure now that is light-years beyond what we had during the last opportunity to pass reform,” he said.
The article covers immigrants’ stories about fighting for legalization and struggling—sometimes futilely—to keep their families together. Read the full article here.
Also check out this Think Progress piece about how grassroots action led Rep. Stephen Sandstrom (R-UT) to completely change his mind on immigration reform. Sandstrom has gone from championing a “show me your papers” law as a state legislator to hoping now that the law will be overtuned. And all because of one DREAMer who got through to him with her story:
He said an undocumented 19-year-old girl had approached him after a town hall meeting in the Summer of 2011 and told him she had no future despite getting good grades in school.
“Nothing else I’d heard from anybody shook me to the core more than that statement,” Sandstrom said to the crowd. “I thought this girl who put her hand over her heart and said the Pledge of Allegiance was in every way an American and she really is an American.”
