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The biggest demonstration of the weekend had nothing to do with health care. An estimated 200,000 people joined together on the National Mall in a march for comprehensive, sensible immigration reform. You might not know anything about this, but rest assured it happened. There are pictures and everything.
I really feel for the organizers of this event. They had planned the March 21 event for months. Bad luck and bad timing led to them getting shoved aside in the media conversation in favor of the health care bill. For the conspiratorially minded among us, to believe that this was deliberate is to believe that someone inside the Congressional Budget Office really hates immigrants and orchestrated the delay in their analysis of the health care bill.
Organized by Reform Immigration for America, the rally brought together groups from around the country — including Service Employees International Union, Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Democracia Ahora and the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles — to send a message to lawmakers: “The time for immigration reform is now.”
President Obama delivered a message from the big screens in the crowd in which he assured the demonstrators of his commitment to passing comprehensive immigration reform.
Political speakers at the march included Luis Gutierrez, Yvette Clark, Joe Crowley, Mike Honda and Sen. Robert Menendez, not only the Senate’s only Latino but the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The message of the marchers? Stop the deportations that separate families, and come up with a humane, sensible plan to overhaul the broken immigration system and bring millions out of the shadows.
America’s Voice offered a multitude of updates on the day of the march. They are the among the leading immigration reform groups in America.
As for the possibility of quick action on this, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham released a draft last week for an immigration reform package that was sadly insufficient in many areas, and included a punitive national ID card with biometric data. And even that stands little chance of passage in the Senate. The xenophobic forces of the status quo have already won this fight once, in 2007, and that was with multiple Republicans on board and a Republican President. Clearly that same level of support will not be evident.
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Its hardly surprising that people don’t realize the ramifications of another AMNESTY? Even if it was true that their were only 11 million illegal immigrants in this nation? (The true number is somewhere between 20 and 30 million) The catch 22 is that once granted Amnesty and those legitimized they can then sponsor immediate family members. Since 1965, between 50 and 70 percent of U.S. immigrant visas distributed yearly have been allotted to close family members of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.One of the reasons is chain migration. In chain migration, one immigrant sponsors several other immigrants for admission, who then sponsor several others themselves,multiply, duplicating and and on. Chain migration happens because present U.S. immigration policy is based on the principle of broadly defined family reunification; immigrants are able to sponsor their relatives back home to be admitted as immigrants here. The illegal aliens given amnesty by Congress in 1986 (The Simpson-Mazzoli Bill) are now fueling naturalization in huge record numbers. (Americas population is around 315 million)
If AMNESTY is forced through in 2010 former illegal aliens become citizens, all of their immediate relatives qualify to depart immediately to the United States, and start new migration chains of their own. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (USCIR) studied the issue of chain migration and proposed limiting family-sponsored immigration to only the spouse and minor children of a U.S. citizen or a legal permanent resident (LPR) and the parents of a U.S. citizen (AS LONG AS THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY A SPONSOR. So even if it was true there were only 11 million illegal aliens in the country, they majority could sponsor close family members. But the truth is, once here the sponsorship is ignored) and millions of family members have to rely on welfare to exist? Older family members, the sick, disabled who have never paid into Social Security, can receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Just multiply the numbers of new immigrants that can be sponsored. Somewhere around 60 to 70 million new faces, that taxpayers in most cases will eventually have to support? This is just another incredulous financial impact, that taxpayers will have to pay for?.DIMINISHING RESOURCES, CROWDED HIGHWAYS, FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE, OVERPOPULATION GROWTH are just part of our immediate future. Learn more about these issues that taxpayers will have to contend with at NUMBERSUSA.Dot.Com