Broken System, Broken Lives: The Importance of Immigration Reform

On Friday, July 29, 2011 leaders from JCUA joined some 160 other representatives of organizations that are part of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable at the White House for a policy briefing to exchange ideas on housing, healthcare, food justice and education. Below is a story Ira Azulay, chair of JCUA’s Immigrant Justice Action Team, will share on the importance of repairing our country’s broken immigration system.

In 2008, Adam Savitt, an immigrant from Guatemala, was sitting on the front porch of his home in Highland Park on a Monday morning, when eight federal immigration agents showed up. Within minutes, they had taken him into custody and handed his belt, keys and wallet to his wife of seven years, Julie Savitt. They did not show her a warrant and did not tell anyone why he was being detained.

Adam was taken to an immigration detention facility. It took his wife four days to find where he was. Though Julie gave the immigration agents his diabetes and depression medication, it took several days and the intervention of immigrants rights organizations, lawyers and his rabbi for him to receive them. Eventually, Adam was deported to Guatemala.

Making the DREAM Reality

Eight Chicago students were arrested Tuesday, July 20 along with at least 12 other students from other cities for holding sit-ins in the Washington, D.C. offices of five senators. The sit-ins were another in a long line of efforts to urge House and Senate members to sponsor the DREAM Act.

JCUA staffers and about 50 other immigrant rights advocates gathered in front of the downtown Chicago offices of the Illinois Republican Party yesterday (July 21) to rally support for the act, and to show support for the arrested students.

In the below video, Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), and others share their thoughts on the urgency of new immigration legislation.

If passed, the DREAM Act would award “conditional permanent resident status” to undocumented immigrants who pursue college degrees or join the military. But without more congressional support, the DREAM will be lost amidst our country’s broken immigration system.

In 2009 JCUA launched the “We Were Strangers, Too” campaign for comprehensive immigration reform noting that at one point or another, we all were strangers to this country. JCUA has, and will continue support the push for comprehensive immigration reform.

(Watch JCUA video, “We Were Strangers, Too“)