Week 4

This week I did some more research about the Reform Immigration for America campaign because I was finding it a little difficult to explain what it is about to the people I was calling. I read through their complete principles to try to make more sense of it. This helped me to see more of the big picture. I organized their ideas into these categories: Work, Economy, Services, Families, Security, and Citizenship. Their main idea about work is that workplace raids need to stop and work conditions and wages must be better for everyone. They think that if there is economic opportunity for immigrants and low-income Americans, everyone will benefit. They want more government support and funding for English and Civics classes. They also want to stop the separation of families that results from raids and the following legal backlogs. They also want security to focus on actual safety threats rather than using so much resources for immigrants who have no intention of harming other people or their property. They want to set up a registration program that will allow people to go through a legal process that requires them to pay a fine, pay taxes, and study English and allows them to become permanent residents and eventually citizens.

This helped me a lot to be able to explain the campaign to other people, although it is still more of a set of ideals rather than a list of directives. Their idea of a process for people to gain citizenship is specific, but some of their other ideas are a bit vague. This makes it a little difficult to "sell" the campaign to other people, especially since I do not understand all of the political ins and outs of the campaign. It is interesting that the campaign is calling for comprehensive reform and deals with so many issues. It makes sense to assert that you cannot really fix things and help people unless you change everything. However, I wonder if the campaign is so ambitious, so that when they meet with resistance and have to compromise and scale back, they can still get something substantial through congress.