Immigrant Rights Caucus

At the immigrant rights caucus, we identified the key issues that we see facing immigrants:

• The importance of engaging labor and economic issues.
• Black-Brown divide.
• Importance of access to education.
• Domestic violence, and fear of calling the police.
• Health care access.
• “Us vs. them” mentalities.
• Push factors (NAFTA, neoliberalism) that leads to immigration.
• Issues of power relations, and the importance of creating a more inclusive environment.
• War and military recruitment (10 undocumented people who have died in the war on Iraq were made US citizens after the fact).
• Education on immigration, to move beyond myths.
• Importance of family reunification, to end separation.
• To be aware of the contributions of immigrants.
• Organize against the Real ID act.
• How can kids succeed in this context?
• We need to build a connection between the peace and justice movement and immigration rights issues.
• Identify the problem of institutional racism that divides communities against each other.

Perhaps we need to move beyond moralism where we respond emotionally to immigration, and instead look at source and structural issues. To change power relations we need to form unions and move beyond victimization.