Marchers hope for passage of US immigration reform bill this year

CHICAGO – Although the more than 200,000 marchers for immigration reforms were somewhat overshadowed by the health care reform debate at the Capitol Hill, they are hopeful that a bipartisan support from the U.S. Congress could put the long-sought sweeping immigration measure over the hump this year.

“This is also how we will achieve a comprehensive immigration reform. It takes courage, clarity of purpose, boldness of action, and using the people's voices and stories to describe the reality of our human needs and conditions," said Juanita Salvador-Burris, one of the organizers on board one of the hundreds of busloads from Chicago, Illinois, who joined the hundreds of thousands of marchers in Washinton D.C.

Salvador-Burris, an officer of the Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights & Empowerment (AFIRE), hopes the mammoth crowd in the nation’s capital put pressure on members of Congress to also give attention to the immigration reform legislation.

“(It) took us more than 16 hours to reach Washington from Chicago (but it) was all worth every mile and minute," she said.

Following Sunday’s March for America, the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) was able to obtain a meeting with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele after staging a rally in front of the RNC office in Washington, D.C.

Jennifer Kons, program associate of Immigrant Family Resource Program of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), said the activists from the FIRM will be meeting with Steele on March 31 to help in the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.

Meanwhile, Joseph Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the march was just a prelude to two weeks of events as they go back to their hometowns to continue organizing.

Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham earlier outlined their framework for comprehensive immigration reform published in the Washington Post.

Immigration reform activists praised the framework, describing it as the first concrete step toward achieving comprehensive immigration reform this year.

“(It) laid out a broad bipartisan blueprint that ensures that undocumented immigrants can work towards citizenship, crack down on bad employers, and create a flexible legal immigration system so that future immigration is controlled and orderly," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and chair of the Reform Immigration for America campaign.

He added they are banking on the White House’s promise to put its full support behind bipartisan reform legislation.

“This framework is a good first step – and we will be working with the Administration, and leaders from both parties to ensure that 2010 is the year that Congress finally fixes America’s long-broken immigration system," Noorani said. — GMANews.TV

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