LOS ANGELES – In the wake of the unveiling of an immigration policy ‘blueprint’ agreed upon by a bipartisan group of Senators, Filipino-Americans in the United States are now looking to make a strong push for immigration reform through ‘aggressive lobbying’ in Washington, DC.
Lolita Andrada Lledo of the Pilipino Workers Center told Balitang America that advocates are now planning to pay visits to lawmakers, who are in the middle of crafting and debating the legislative reform.
Lledo also said that she plans to go to the nation’s capital within the next two weeks, where she will be meeting with other groups advocating for immigration as they push for the policy reform.
According to Dr. Leo Pandac, spokesperson of the National Asian Republican Coalition, the biggest obstacle to the proposed reform lies in the House of Representatives, where a majority of seats belong to Republicans who fear the possible backlash from conservative voters in their districts.
“In their district, people are against immigration so they have to be against immigration or they’re not coming back to Congress,” said Pandac in a report by Balitang America.
‘Let’s start with this’
The immigration policy ‘blueprint’ unveiled by a group of Senators from both the Democrat and the Republican parties presented a possibility of a path to citizenship for as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already here in the US.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the proposed immigration reform has four main goals:
-Creating a path for citizenship for undocumented immigrants already here, while beefing up border security and improving the tracking system for immigrants who are here on visas.
-Reforming the legal immigrations system, including the granting of green cards to immigrants with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math from American universities.
-Creating a non-forgeable system that will allow employers to verify the legal status of prospective workers to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants in the future.
-Allowing more skilled workers into the US, and letting employers hire immigrants upon demonstrating that they are not able to recruit US citizens into their workforce; and establishing an agricultural worker program.
“Sa akin, okay na ito,” Lledo told Balitang America. “Let’s start with this and kung ano pa ang ma-push natin.”
Lledo reiterated that there must be a ‘very clear mindset’ that there is a path to citizenship in the current set of legislative proposals.
Filipino Republicans are also looking forward to seeing the reform enacted. Pandac, who spoke for the conservative Pinoys, pointed out that immigration reform should be a long-term solution. He pointed out that the last time a solution to illegal immigration was enacted was in 1982, during the Reagan administration. Over four million undocumented immigrants benefitted from that legislative reform in the 80s.
Vargas urges undocumented to come out, be unafraid
Filipino Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas, reacting to President Obama’s speech in Las Vegas about comprehensive immigration reform, said that undocumented Filipinos should not be ashamed anymore and that the ‘time to be scared is over.’
“You cannot solve something you cannot face, that’s the bottom line and we as a community need to support each other,” Vargas said.
Vargas, together with a team of journalists from the Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for reportage on the Virginia Tech shootings. In 2011, Vargas admitted that he was an undocumented immigrant. He has since become a strong advocate for immigration law and reform.
source: asianjournal.com
