Immigration advocacy goes local

Updated 1h ago
By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY

As the prospect of Congress passing an overhaul of immigration law wanes, immigration advocacy groups are shifting their sights from the U.S. Capitol and focusing on their local communities.

They are forming neighborhood committees to help legal and illegal immigrants navigate deportation proceedings and learn English. They lobby local police and government officials to resist harsh enforcement and warn neighbors of immigration raids.

"The new front of progress is definitely at the local level," says Stephen Fotopulos, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Francisco Pacheco, East Coast coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says the local efforts are a way to maintain the cohesion seen during marches against Arizona's immigration law this year and larger protests in 2006.

"The problem was that thousands of people would go to the events, and when it was finished, people would say 'What do we do now?' and they would go home," Pacheco says.

Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates lower levels of immigration, says people who support tighter immigration controls have also gone local as Congress avoids immigration legislation.

In the first half of the year, 44 states passed 191 immigration laws that included restrictions to public benefits for illegal immigrants, penalties for businesses that hired them and sanctions against human trafficking, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Dane says a large number of municipalities have followed suit.

"The open-borders groups are now beginning to see that the battle has shifted from (Washington, D.C.) to localities," Dane says.

Local actions:

•The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights created 21 family support networks this spring to set up a safety net for immigrant families whose relatives get deported, leaving spouses and children behind. Executive director Joshua Hoyt says the group is still pushing for immigration legislation introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., but realized communities should be the focus in the meantime.

"We said, 'We have to figure out a way to organize ourselves to provide support at the same time we challenge the policies,' " Hoyt says.

•In Washington, OneAmerica, a statewide civil rights groups, has established nine community groups. Executive director Pramila Jayapal says they have begun regular discussions with local politicians and police agencies to ensure that the plight of immigrants is understood.

•In Arizona, about 15 "neighborhood defense committees" were created in recent months, and organizers are getting requests to open more around Phoenix.

Arizona lawmakers passed a law that would have required police officers to determine the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there was "reasonable suspicion" they were in the country illegally. It was blocked by a federal judge in July; Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has appealed.

Opal Tometi, whose Puente Arizona organization helped create the committees, says they serve several functions: They train illegal immigrants to know their rights when they are stopped by police. They work with lawyers to navigate deportation proceedings. They offer English classes and arrange for doctors to treat people nervous about going to hospitals.

They send out video teams to monitor for civil rights violations when police or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents perform immigration raids.

Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which advocates lower levels of immigration, says he is troubled by illegal immigrants monitoring police to alert neighbors of their operations.

"That really crosses into a whole different type of political activity," Beck says. "It's very counterproductive to the cause of these immigrant groups, because it'll cause them to seem more foreign and less American."

Alma Mendoza, a single mother of three in Sunnyslope, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, says her neighbors were suspicious when she first approached them about joining the committees. Mendoza, who directs the Sunnyslope committee, says illegal immigrants try to keep a low profile in Arizona, and even legal residents are cautious to protect friends or relatives who are illegal immigrants.

"At first, people didn't trust us. They said people wouldn't respond, that it was too hard to organize this group of people," says Mendoza, 37, a Mexico native who is now a legal U.S. resident. "Now in each meeting, we have forty, fifty people. They're thanking us for worrying about the community."



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