Immigration: Congress' Next Major Reform?

Although the health care reform bill is not yet finished, the next big Congressional reform effort is already on the horizon. Yesterday, Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP), the first comprehensive immigration reform legislation of the 111th Congress, and a crucial step towards passing progressive immigration reform. The 87 original co-sponsors of the bill include members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Black Caucus, Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Progressive Caucus.

The bill is the first step in a process to finally fix our broken immigration system. The CIR ASAP bill includes many of the elements necessary to bring the immigration system in tune with the current social and economic demands of our nation including, family reunification, restoration of judicial discretion, a generous legalization program, sensible law enforcement, and creative, if untested, answers to future immigration flows.

Although this legislation is national in scope, California as a state with a high immigrant population will be especially impacted. California NOW will be focussing our advocacy work around ensuring that the final bill contains language that will protect immigrants who are domestic violence survivors or have suffered persecution for their gender and/or sexuality. Any new immigration reform bill must give committed same-sex couples the ability to sponsor an immigrant partner, and must protect women and LGBTQI persons who are at risk in their country of origin.

The necessity of comprehensive immigration reform stems from a long-neglected immigration system that has failed to keep up with our nation's changing needs, resulting in breakdowns that have crippled our ability to regulate immigration adequately, protect our borders, reunite families, and foster economic opportunity.

CIR ASAP is a commonsense solution that will restore fairness to our labor markets, acknowledges and values the contributions made by immigrants to our country, and is a step toward economic recovery – because we can’t fix our economy on top of a broken immigration system. It provides a fair pathway to legalization, protects opportunity for education, protects the due process rights of all, and better targets our national security resources. It’s also a step toward making sure our economy has the right foundation to grow and prosper as it recovers from the worst crisis since the Great Depression.

To get more involved:
Send a message to Congress that immigration reform must help keep families together. 
Call 1-866-974-8813 to tell the White House to keep its promise, and act to pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.
Text “justice” or “justicia” to 69866 to get connected to the Reform Immigration for America campaign. 
Celebrate International Migrants' Day on December 18th.  
Read a summary of the CIR ASAP bill.
Read Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a Primer from the Immigration Policy Center  
Visit the America's Voice site