Immigration Reform Takes a Village

Immigration Matters

New America Media, Commentary, Rich Stolz, Posted: Feb 15, 2008

Editor’s Note: In order to be successful, immigration reform requires a much broader-based coalition. To that end, community organizations across the country are signing a pledge to avoid blaming immigrants and to reject divisiveness, says Rich Stolz, immigration director for the Center for Community Change, a national social justice non-profit that coordinates the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM). Immigration Matters regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.

Iowa farmer Larry Ginter is clear about why he supports a pathway to citizenship. “I’ve been to Mexico. I’ve met migrants. They’re farmers just like me, and just like me, unfair trade policies are pushing them off the land. That’s why I support humane immigration reform.” He told presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this as he stood next to an immigrant youth from New Mexico, and an Irish immigrant leader from Chicago.

Ginter’s statement reflects a genuine gut-held understanding of why his experience is interconnected with those of migrants coming from Latin America. And it’s an invitation to immigrant leaders to join in his struggle to create fair trade policies that can uplift farmers struggling to make ends meet in the United States. It’s the same garment of destiny Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about years ago, how we are all bound together by our destinies; our success isn’t individual, but collective.

Ginter’s act of solidarity happened at the Iowa Heartland Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa held Dec. 1, 2007. More than 40 grassroots leaders from all walks of life, representing the African American, Latino, White and Asian communities, joined together on a stage at HyVee Auditorium to share their stories and pose direct questions to the five Democratic presidential candidates in the race at that time. Nearly 4,000 people had gathered to cheer them on. The event was organized by the Campaign for Community Values, a multi-ethnic coalition of grassroots organizations working to bridge their campaigns under a banner of interconnectedness. Nearly one-third of the people in the auditorium were immigrants, representing the Fair Immigration Reform Movement.

Two months later in Washington, D.C., community values was also a central theme in the second annual summit of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. FIRM has adopted it as a way to talk about our issues because we believe it’s our best path to victory. First, starting from a place of values – what really matters to a person – rather than with an issue, is a way to open a dialogue with new potential partners or allies. Second, a conversation about how issues are linked to one another creates space for building alliances. Most importantly, it allows us a way to build a broader movement for justice, consistent with our aspirations for reforms to trade policies, health care, housing, and poverty.

That’s why, at the height of this critical election season, in Washington, D.C., FIRM launched the “Building America Together” campaign to revive political momentum for fixing America’s broken immigration system. Nearly 100 immigrant rights organizations from 30 states, many of them key presidential battlegrounds, committed to combine their efforts to organize a massive national pledge campaign and petition drive that will challenge policymakers to reject policies that divide our communities.

It calls on leaders to engage the nation in the work of developing shared solutions to the range of issues that connect us to each other, including immigration, to stop scapegoating immigrants, and to bring an end to divisive rhetoric. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of community leaders are expected to sign this pledge: I commit to stand for America’s finest ideals and core community values and publicly reject the politics of division and isolation that fan anger and hate against any person or community. I will work towards just, workable and humane immigration reform. To see the full pledge, please go to www.buildingamericatogether.org.

Already, organizations in two dozen communities have begun to use the pledge as a tool to re-engage old allies, build new relationships, and challenge political leaders. On Feb. 6, even before the pledge campaign was officially launched, the City of Boston became the first municipality to “sign” the pledge.

This work is necessary to reposition our movement and give it the power to win. The hundreds of organizations that have joined the pledge campaign will bring a new level of organizing, leadership development and alliance-building to their work. There is space for Larry Ginter and thousands like him, in the immigrant rights movement. And it will be through relationships that immigrants build with people like Ginter, that we’ll build our appetites to address the other issues that affect immigrant communities.

This is how we’ll build America together.



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