Immigrant Community Calls on Federal Leaders for Reform

Four years later, its organizer, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the founding executive director of Voces de la Frontera, promises that this year’s May 1 rally through Milwaukee will be just as strong to remind the Obama administration that it cannot ignore immigrants and the overheated crackdown on them across the country.

Neumann-Ortiz called 2010 “a flashback to 2006,” when immigrants and their allies rallied in opposition to harshly punitive immigration reform, championed by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Menomonee Falls), and in support of comprehensive reform that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“We’re seeing again in 2010 the lack of leadership at the federal level to resolve what fundamentally needs a federal fix,” Neumann-Ortiz said.

President Barack Obama had promised to work on comprehensive immigration reform during his first year in office, but that promise had been sidelined while his administration dealt with the recession and the protracted debate over health care reform. In the meantime, Neumann-Ortiz said, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and local law enforcement agencies around the country have stepped up their activities against illegal immigrants.

While the administration had said it would focus on exploitative employers and the deportation of illegal immigrants who had committed violent crimes, a leaked Feb. 22 memo from a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official indicated that nonviolent offenders are being targeted because they are easier to deport. ICE has since distanced itself from that memo.

“I think what is really shocking is that it’s happening under an administration that was voted in on a platform that had high standards in terms of the understanding of what was wrong,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “People criticized enforcement-only policies and the kinds of separation of families that was going on. But all that we’ve seen is an escalation of that level of abuse.”

Most strikingly, the governor of Arizona signed into law a measure that requires local law enforcement to determine an individual’s immigration status based on “reasonable suspicion” that an individual is in the country illegally. Critics—including Obama—have called it legalized racial profiling.

“It’s already happening,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “But the law would essentially enshrine Jim Crow. It would take us back to that period by saying there are different standards that apply based on the color of your skin. It’s a very dangerous time.”

Locally, Voces de la Frontera and its allies around the state are documenting examples of “driving while Latino,” or traffic stops based on the ethnicity of the driver.

“We’re seeing a version of what’s happening in Arizona,” Neumann-Ortiz said. “We know it’s happening across the country.”

In addition to its work on immigration reform, Voces de la Frontera is also calling attention to the legal issues of Omar Damian Ortega, a welder who was injured on the job and filed a workers’ compensation claim. Although all workers are entitled to this benefit—no matter what their immigration status—the private insurer that handled his claim, West Bend Mutual Insurance, checked into his immigration status and alerted the Grafton Police Department about potential identity theft, Ortega said.

Ortega, a husband and father who is active in his church, spent five months in jail and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in order to be released. He now faces deportation.

“I am a worker,” Ortega told the Shepherd last week. “I am not a criminal.”

Neumann-Ortiz said politicians must wake up to the injustice of the current immigration system and enact comprehensive immigration reform before the midterm elections.

“It’s not just about the urgency for immigration reform, but the fact that the repression and racism and the criminalization and family separation—all of that has escalated to an intolerable level,” Neumann-Ortiz said. Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez introduced a measure that encompasses the broad goals of the immigrants’ rights community, Neumann-Ortiz said, but the Senate has only floated a blueprint for reform by New York Sen. Charles Schumer and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

For more information about the May 1 immigration rally, which will begin at noon at Voces de la Frontera (1027 S. Fifth St.), go to www.vdlf.org.