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learn more Working for Justice in Our Communities Since 1929
The fate of almost a million lives could be decided in the next six hours. As a voter, as a millenial, as a migrant, as a Guatemalan, I'm writing to say that I will be watching along with the vast majority of those who will determine the future of the United States of America.
It is imperative that you focus on these Senators. If you've called already, call again. If you've called again, ask five friends to do the same. If you've done all that, here are some more actions you can take.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.
November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Lizbeth Mateo and I am undocumented. On May 17th, on the 56th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, I, along with Mohammad Abdollahi, Yahaira Carrillo and two others, became the first undocumented students to risk deportation by staging a sit-in inside Senator McCain's office in Tucson, Arizona, to demand the immediate passage of the DREAM Act. As a result of that sit-in we were arrested, turned over to ICE, and we now face deportation
The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service. With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!
Dear Mr. President,
My name is Carlos and I'm a 23 year old undocumented immigrant from Caracas, Venezuela. I want to legalize my immigration status in this country through the passage of DREAM Act this year. For too long have I lived in the U.S. without papers. It has been over 20 years, now. I want to legalize my immigration status in order to fulfill my dreams of becoming a young professional in architecture.
In case you missed it, the Associated Press recently covered our request for a meeting with Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.). We are asking Sen. Brown to meet with us before April 17.
Harvard College Act on a Dream has been trying to meet with Sen. Brown since he was first elected at the beginning of the semester. We were told that his office was a mess the first couple of months, but we were finally asked to fax our meeting request to his office. We sent the fax on March 5, 2010.
After not getting a commitment to a meeting for over a month, we were forced to take our meeting request public. We
joined forces with the Student
Immigrant Movement to set up an
online petition which already has over 100 signatures (please sign
it if you haven't done so, yet). The online petition resulted in
coverage from the AP, and now our request is all over the web. We were
happy to hear through the AP that his office has received our meeting
request and will shortly ask for more information from us.
Still, it's going to take a lot more than an AP article and a hundred petition signatures to secure a meeting with Brown. Here are some things you can do to help:
SIGN the petition at change.org and ask all of your friends and family to do the same, especially if they are Massachusetts residents.
CALL Brown's D.C. office (202-224-4543) and his local office (617-565-3170) to ask whether or not Brown will meet with us before April 17.
JOIN the Facebook group and ask your Facebook friends to do the same
HELP us fight any misinformation or nativism that you see online regarding our meeting request.
[This is a guest post from Carl McGinnis, a citizen of the United States, who has seen the horrors of immigrant detention after ICE detained his legal immigrant friend, Noureddine Feddane. Originally cross-posted at Change.org].
I am a citizen of the United States and I have a friend that is from Paris, France here on a student visa to finish his degree. Noureddine Feddane has been here since 2005. His visa is valid until March of 2010, his passport is valid until 2014, and his I-20 is current. He is not what people call an 'illegal immigrant.' In 2008, he fell in love and married a U.S. citizen that just happens to be addicted to prescription medications. Noureddine knew nothing about this. But he was arrested due to her mistakes.
He was placed in detention and scheduled for deportation. My friend has been in detention center in Pompano Beach Florida for 5 months now. This couple has lost all there savings on lawyers, she lost her job, and they are in the process of losing their home. All this was caused because ICE has the wrong person in jail.
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I have written many letters to Janet Napolitano, Senator Bill Nelson, Representative Ginny Brown-Waite and even President Obama. But no one will listen. What is illegal in this case is the way DHS is treating this guy, who is 51 and has never had a traffic violation. While in detention center, they have abused him, denied him food and proper medical treatment. Noureddine is diabetic and they will not give him the proper food or medical attention. The phone system is very poor and hardly works. I suspect that they plan it that way so the detainees cannot contact their lawyers and family. I fear he will be next on the long list of persons that have died while in detention.
On Tuesday, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying. Regardless, Sotomayor would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court, signaling to Latino/as that the White House is aware of our need for more representation in government.
A very interesting investigative report by the NYTimes was pubilshed this week on the target of ICE raids.
According to the article, while ICE said that Operation: Return to Sender and other such programs were directed at undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds, "the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either."
More, from the story-
Internal directives by immigration officials in 2006 raised arrest quotas for each team in the National Fugitive Operations Program, eliminated a requirement that 75 percent of those arrested be criminals, and then allowed the teams to include nonfugitives in their count.
In the next year, fugitives with criminal records dropped to 9 percent of those arrested, and nonfugitives picked up by chance - without a deportation order - rose to 40 percent. Many were sent to detention centers far from their homes, and deported.
The impact of the internal directives, obtained by a professor and students at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law through a Freedom of Information lawsuit and shared with The New York Times, shows the power of administrative memos to significantly alter immigration enforcement policy without any legislative change.
The memos also help explain the pattern of arrests documented in a report, criticizing the fugitive operations program, to be released on Wednesday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington.
Analyzing more than five years of arrest data supplied to the institute last year by Julie Myers, who was then chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report found that over all, as the program spent a total of $625 million, nearly three-quarters of the 96,000 people it apprehended had no criminal convictions.
Without consulting Congress, the report concluded, the program shifted to picking up "the easiest targets, not the most dangerous fugitives."
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Originally posted on 
Receive information on the latest action items, media campaigns, and legislative initiatives from ProMigrant
No spam or press release dumps from DC advocacy groups, lobbyists, or politicos. No requests for donations, or re-directs to astroturf groups looking to harvest your e-mail information.
Just real action for real change from real grassroots activists.
