http://www.citypaper.net/clog/2006/07/10/la-migra/
La Migra
Mondhttp://www.citypaper.net/clog/2006/ ... a-migra/ay, July 10th, 2006 at 9:44 am
posted by Brian Hickey
Last week, City Paper editorial intern Alexandra O'Neill, along with fellow intern Anna Phillips, headed over to the National Constitution Center to check out a U.S. Senate field hearing on immigration reform, and the protests outside. Here's their report.
Matching T-shirts. American Flags. And a message.
The group of 40 wore white shirts with the phrase “Legalize the Irish” emblazoned on the front. Some were even toting flags as they entered the packed auditorium in the National Constitution Center at Independence Mall last Wednesday.
The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform was here to support the Senate’s immigration bill. And for group members like Sibohan—an undocumented immigrant—the bill might provide the ticket to citizenship they’ve been waiting for.
Born in Ireland, Sibohan said she is one of the 60,000 Irish immigrants in the U.S. living here illegally.
“As of now, there is no legal process by which an Irish person can immigrate [to the U.S.],” she said, adding that of the one million Irish applicants, only 2,000 are accepted into the country. “If there was a legal process, we’d be more than willing to use it.”
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter agrees.
And so it seemed appropriate that Philadelphia — the birthplace of U.S. democracy provided the backdrop for the first Senate Judiciary Committee field hearing on immigration reform.
Senators Specter and Ted Kennedy, a Democratic Party powerhouse from Massachusetts, mediated the bipartisan event, which included testimony from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Philly Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson.
“Tragedies can occur when people put nationalism and ethnicity before humanity,” said Johnson.
Bloomberg — who was uncharacteristically outspoken — said he strongly supported the Senate bill, calling those who thought a wall would stop illegal immigration “naïve” and the plan “duplicitous.”
“You might as well sit on the beach and tell the tide not to come in,” he said. But Hazelton Mayor Lou Barletta was unsympathetic to illegal immigrants living in his city. He said he intends to make English the “official language of business” and punish landlords who rent property to undocumented immigrants in his jurisdiction. He also shamelessly blamed rising crime rates— from murder to graffiti — on undocumented immigrants.“We are buckling under the strain of immigration,” he said. “We are Small Town, USA.”
The hearing provided a forum to draw attention to the Senate bill, which is spearheaded by Specter and Kennedy, among others. It was held largely in response to the House taking its version of the bill on the road.“If we were at a conference table in Washington, I would’ve preferred that,” Specter said during a pre-hearing press conference. But “the Senate was not going to sit idly by and be a potted plant.”
The difference between the two bills, said Specter, is that the Senate bill emphasizes the need for comprehensive reform and the House bill is concerned only with border control.
There are currently 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
