The Immigrant Rights Movement Goes to Congress
By Elizabeth Gonzalez

The week that Bush spent abroad visiting leaders across South America repeatedly stating he wanted to work on immigration, many of the people who have left those lands for the US were lobbying Congress in Washington DC to act now for a just and humane immigration reform. Hundreds of people from across the country, from national and grassroots organizations, visited the Capital several days to share their concerns about immigration. Everything from the recent raids and rushed deportations, to the Dream Act for students, to legalization for the millions of undocumented people living and contributing to the US was addressed to members of Congress.

I spent two days in Washington DC, attempting to meet with members of Congress to talk about immigration reform as part of a national effort of organizations who were lobbying Congress for comprehensive immigration reform.

I traveled with a group from Voluntarios de la Comunidad , a grassroots organization from San Jose, CA that has been active with the immigrant community for years. My parents are both immigrants from Mexico and I have a lot of family and friends who have made their lives here and are undocumented. I went because a lot of people I know can't travel to Washington. I have been active in my community since high school and the immigrant rights movement has been the one thing my whole family has gone out to the streets for. It is an issue that has kept my family, like so many others divided across a line drawn in the earth and I have to do my part to make a change. I called my family each day to let them know our experiences there in Washington and even though I was sometimes down they motivated me saying that everyone back at home was doing what they could, too.

We arrived early Tuesday morning to meet up with partners from Stockton and we sat in on a meeting with the only actual representative I would see in the next two days, Mr. Dennis Cardoza , representing Merced. We met with about 12 people in his office for about twenty minutes. With one of his staff members as a translator, the mostly Spanish speaking group was able to get their concerns across about farm workers and the need for a legalization so that these workers who provide so much needed work for the country can share in the protection under the law. Cardoza was able to relate to the group saying that his own grandparents were immigrants from Portugal and that he knows that his grandparents and immigrants today share the drive to work hard and make better lives for their families. He said that an immigration bill is the one thing he believes this 110th congress can get done this year.

After this meeting we had several doors metaphorically closed in our face. A lot of the meetings had been set up in advance, but we were also encouraged to drop by other offices to speak with whom we could. It is very hard to be heard in Congress if you do not speak English. Our groups were treated very differently and it is a bit surprising that many members of Congress aren't prepared and don't represent their communities in their staff. Our own San Jose representative, Zoe Lofgren , was unable to meet with us and her staff looked baffled because we were requesting a bit of their time.

The ones holding the light in the Congress are Representative Luis Gutierrez, representing Illinois' 4th Congressional District and Jeff Flake representing Arizona's Sixth District, are presenting their own bill that would be the first in many years to seek citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Gutierrez is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and sits on the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, which Zoe Lofgren chairs.

The following day groups set out to meet with all the offices of Congress and some had better luck than others. One group led by Porfirio Quintano of Comite de Padres Unidos from San Francisco, CA had a horrible experience meeting with the office of Howard Mckeon, a Republican representing the Santa Clarita, 25th district of California. After being told that they could have a meeting in another office, the group was led to a stairway where they began to tell their stories and were told: you crossed the border and do not have the right to demand anything so you can go back to your country, and were left at the stairs. It was something hard to imagine, but many groups were not prepared to respond to situations like this and could have used some more orientation on what to do in different scenarios.

The days had an impact on me, but I wouldn't say that the experience filled me with optimism for the reforms that we hope for. It is clearly a struggle where neither party is willing to concede much, so I'm not sure what the common points would be where Democrats and Republicans can come together and agree on new immigration policy. The lives of so many people depend on the actions these group of people decide to take or not to take and we can't afford to sit back and wait for them to come to a decision, we have to help move them to action.

I traveled with was a mix of residents, citizens and undocumented persons. There were some jokes about possibly getting caught and deported amongst us, with an obviously real concern behind the smiles, but it makes me greatly respect all those people who take action even though they don't have documents themselves. They are not waiting for others to fight their fight and serve as inspiration to know that lacking documents does not limit our ability to change the country. One of my companions, Diego Ramirez, 22 from San Jose is undocumented and went on the trip hoping that some change would come from these visits. “I came back with the reality that it is more like a show to say ‘See we are doing something for the people' but in the end there are only a handful of people with the decision making power,” he said. He felt this event was done so that people are kept happy thinking something is getting done and in the meantime they don't rise up in marches and boycotts again. Diego is sure some kind of reform is going to happen, “but I'm not getting my hopes up because I've been disappointed many times before,” he adds.

Meeting all the different people who were there and traveled so far because they are still trying to make a difference was inspiring to me. Since the marches of last year a lot of folks feel that nothing else has been done and that there were no effects from those massive protests. The people who feel that way, though are mistaken because thousands of people are still working in their communities informing them about not only their rights, but organizing themselves so that they are not isolated in these moments that immigrants are being targeted once again. I met people from the border towns who successfully stopped their local police departments from acting as border patrol agents when they detained people for regular traffic stops. Those are the stories that inspired me, the things happening in local communities that we don't always hear about, but that are making the biggest differences of all.

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