MAYDAY. I just returned from Taft Park outside the U.S. Capitol, where several hundred protesters gathered to support progressive immigration reform. Although mobilizations took place nationwide today, the D.C. event focused on the Asian and Pacific Islander community and featured boisterous traditional Korean drumming in addition to the rallying cries that resonated during nationwide street protests last year: "Families united!" and "Si, se puede!" ("Together we can!").
Most immediately, activists are pressing Congress to pass the DREAM and STRIVE acts, which together would give over 12 million undocumented immigrants a path toward permanent residency and citizenship. DREAM would help 65,000 undocumented high school students fund their college educations by making them eligible for loans, scholarships, and in-state tuition at public colleges. STRIVE is a broad response to President Bush's immigration proposal. Instead of creating an underclass of "guest workers" with no hope for citizenship, STRIVE allows approximately 400,000 workers to enter the U.S. annually on a renewable three-year visa. The worker and his or her family would become eligible for citizenship after five years of residency and paying a $500 fee. And unlike the Bush proposal, STRIVE maintains the United States' commitment to reuniting families across borders. Currently, some legal immigrants wait as long as two decades to bring relatives to the United States due to the immense backlog of applications. Lastly, the STRIVE act compromises with moderates by strengthening border security. And it shifts penalties for hiring undocumented immigrants from workers to employers.
As organizers told me at the rally, the immigrant rights movement is a true microcosm of progressivism at large. Women's rights and reproductive justice are central to this movement: It is often men who have employee-sponsored legal immigration status, while their female partners are exploited in the illegal job market and left without the basic healthcare they need (including access to abortion or prenatal services). And if a guest worker program is created, labor rights as we know them will cease to exist, as millions of workers will likely be denied the right to unionize and will continue to exist in a shadowy underworld -- but under the White House proposal, a legal one. As labor liberals press for the Employee Free-Choice Act, it's crucial to remember the immigrant movement and the great work this community is doing in building a truly diverse feminist/worker's rights/family values coalition.
--Dana Goldstein
