Immigrant rights organizations have called for a major march on Washington on January 21, the day after Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th US president.
Defenders and advocates of tens of millions of immigrants will take to the streets to press their case for immigration reform and remind Obama of one of the policy planks he plugged on the campaign stump as he wooed the Hispanic vote.
“On January 21 we will be here in Washington to ask for reforms and foran end to the raids” at workplaces that have seen illegal immigrantsarrested and deported, said Angelica Salas, director of the LosAngeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.
“We ask the president-elect to consider immigration reform one ofhis 10 domestic priorities,” she told reporters Tuesday, adding thatshe hoped reform legislation would begin “in the first 100 days” of anObama administration.
The US Congressfailed to pass the most recent version of sweeping immigrationlegislation, in 2007, which would have given legal status and a path tocitizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants residing inthe United States.
Obama and his rival in the 2008 presidential race, Republican Senator John McCain,had been involved in negotiations over the text, and immigration reformearned broad support from both Obama and McCain on the 2008 campaigntrail.
But in the final months beforethe election, immigration swiftly took a back seat to the deepening andmore pressing economic crisis.