Activists walk for immigration reform
For three days, did was walk.
The immigrant rights activists walked, despite blisters forming on their feet and their shoes wearing thin, despite the physical and emotional toll it was taking on their bodies, and despite the cold air that blew against their faces. They walked for 60 miles because, if nothing else, it forced the people around them to pay attention.
Colorado immigrants and their allies joined for all or part of the journey from Denver to Greeley earlier this month in a pilgrimage calling for the state’s congressional leaders to support legislation that would expand a pathway to citizenship for immigrants lacking legal status. A federal bill would update what’s known as the immigration registry, which has been used in the past to grant amnesty to waves of immigrants who entered the country without authorization.
More than a dozen advocates joined the long walk at stops along the way, while a handful — all immigrants themselves — made the entire journey. The participants stopped in Denver, Northglenn, Brighton, Fort Lupton, Platteville and Greeley, sleeping in churches at night. They met with staff members representing Colorado’s congressional leaders as well as with community members.
“Our community is determined to get (a path to citizenship), no matter how long or how hard the road is,” said Raquel Lane-arellano, a spokesperson for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
The immigration registry, created by Congress in 1929, has allowed people who entered the United States without documentation before a certain date to apply for permanent residency if they are not subject to deportation for other reasons. Since the registry’s establishment, the cutoff date has been updated four times — most recently extended to apply to arrivals by Jan. 1, 1972, in a change approved in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan was in office.
At the time, Reagan, a Republican, also granted amnesty for immigrant children without documentation through an executive order.
Supporters of another update say it’s one of the easiest ways to offer a quick legal all they path to permanent residency for more than 8 million immigrants who have lived in the country for years, setting down roots. They now rely on a patchwork of immigration laws that apply only to some immigrants — and they can only look for hope to a divided Congress that for years has failed to pass fixes for the broken immigration system.
As broader immigration reform bills proposing registry updates have stalled in recent years, at least part of the opposition has stemmed from a resistance by more conservative elected leaders to grant legal status to large groups of people who entered the country without authorization. Opponents of the idea tend to favor stronger enforcement of existing immigration laws, including stepped-up border security and, in some cases, more deportations.
Lane-arrellano, whose family immigrated from Mexico, said she has relatives who benefited from the last registry update decades ago. Others are “forced to live in unnecessary substandard status because Congress refuses to take action,” she said, even though they’ve lived in and contributed to the U.S. for decades.
For Leticia Ramirez, a 46-year-old mother of three who has lived in Colorado for 21 years since coming from Mexico, a big part of the pilgrimage was also about informing the community. She said the legislation incentivizing illegal immigration or mass amnesty.”