New Report: Immigration activism cresting across the country
If you read this blog, chances are you’re well aware that religious organizations and congregations have worked for years to meet the needs of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. Now, as Congress and the administration focus on tackling healthcare, global warming and other pressing issues, diverse people of faith are stepping up to ensure that immigration reform is not forgotten. A new report released today by the Center For American Progress — Loving Thy Neighbor: Immigration Reform and Communities of Faith — details the faith community’s widespread efforts to enact just, humane reform.
An excerpt from the executive summary:
This report is a collection of present-day immigrant stories. Unlike the more familiar narrative of oppression in a foreign land, these are stories of faith in the flesh, of people filled with the conviction of their religious beliefs and pushed to act in defense of needy neighbors in their community.
The report also intends to be an antidote to the mistaken belief that ordinary people of faith are not involved in political advocacy or shy from pressing their influence in national debates and policies affecting immigrants. As these stories demonstrate, many efforts sprang up at the grassroots, independent of each other and often without awareness that anyone or any other group was concerned about this issue. People of faith pitched in to help fellow humans whose lives seemed very different from their own, and they were spurred on by a sense of moral outrage at the detentions of undocumented immigrants in their communities.
The stories in this report, and others like it, should play a more prominent role in the public conversation, which too often ignores the brutality and injustice of our immigration system. Because of its role working directly with immigrants and their families, the faith community is in a unique position to speak tell the stories of separated families, unjustly and inhumanely detained immigrants, and victims of workplace exploitation and hate crimes.
The entire report, which includes a map of congregations and religious groups across the country working for just, humane immigration reform is available here.