‘Dreamers’ descend on Congress to demand immigration reform

Six years ago, Evelyn Rivera, then a teenager on spring break from high school, saw her mother hauled away to jail and deportation before her very eyes. This week, Evelyn marched on Washington to get her mother back.

As she tells the story, Evelyn was riding in a car her mother, Yolanda, was driving, when the police pulled Ms. Rivera over.

“It was for a minor traffic infraction. I can’t even remember what it was,” Evelyn says. “But she couldn’t produce a driver’s license.” Yolanda Rivera, an immigrant from Columbia, was undocumented, her daughter says.

“She was arrested and handcuffed right in front of me. And then they took her and put her in the local jail. They ran her name through the computer and found she was undocumented, even though she had been here in the U.S. for 15 years.

“So they put her in detention for four months — and then shipped her back to Colombia.” Neither Evelyn nor her sister have seen Yolanda Rivera since.

Her mother’s deportation pushed Evelyn Rivera into activism, and she’s now the Southeastern Regional Coordinator for United We Dream, a group backed by the Service Employees and dozens of other organizations, that sponsored this week’s descent of “Dreamers” on D.C. to campaign for comprehensive immigration reform.

SEIU also spent $200,000 to run pro-reform radio ads on Spanish-language stations in congressional districts of 10 potential House GOP “swing votes” on the issue.

The topic is particularly resonant for the Dreamers, 500 of whom took their own oath of allegiance to the U.S. on July 10. Coordinators and leaders of the Dreamers, youngsters brought to the U.S. by their undocumented parents, discussed their plans at a July 8 telephone press conference. The Dreamers have been credited with putting a human face, and changing minds, on the issue of immigration reform.

The Dreamers, like other groups campaigning for comprehensive immigration reform, want Congress to create a path to eventual citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. Of that group, 7.5 million are adults. Many are like Yolanda Rivera – longtime U.S. residents who only lack needed citizenship papers. The other 3.5 million are children, including the Dreamers.

Unions particularly support the immigrants’ and the Dreamers’ cause. That’s because immigration reform would bring the 11 million people immediately – even before they become citizens – under U.S. labor law. And that change would not only
lessen exploitation of the undocumented adults by employers, but also take away leverage those same employers use, threatening to hire the undocumented, to drive down wages and living standards for all other U.S. workers.

The Senate listened to the Dreamers, unions and immigrants’ advocates and approved a comprehensive immigration reform bill, with a 13-year-path to citizenship, by a bipartisan vote last month. The GOP-run House is another matter. Hence the Dreamers’ descent on Washington.

House GOP leaders met secretly with their members in a mass caucus on July 10 to hash out the party’s stand on immigration reform. The Dreamers – including Evelyn Rivera — were there on the U.S. Capitol lawn to remind them that, as United We Dream Director Christina Jimenez put it: “We are here. We are Americans, too.”

“We need to create strong pressure in this fight, and the (GOP) leadership has to lead,” Jimenez added. Her group organized the week’s events and the Dreamers’ lobbying in D.C., and in key states, such as Texas, Florida, Arizona and Utah.

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.

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