Grass-roots immigration reform - Los Angeles Times
Posted by
uluckidog 564 days ago
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Fundamental change usually proceeds from the bottom up, which is why it often blindsides most politicians and much of the media.
For example, the "tea party"-style rage that is this election cycle's defining characteristic grows out of a broad, if inchoate, sense that the American economy no longer apportions prosperity or opportunity in anything close to an equitable fashion. As David Cay Johnston reported Monday, last year the 74 highest-paid Americans each earned an average of $519 million annually — or about $10 million a week. That was up from $92 million the year before. At the same time, every measure of ordinary Americans' pay — total, average and median — fell from the previous year. Adjusted for inflation, median pay was actually less than it was 10 years ago.
Marriage equality is another question on which change is pushing up from the grass roots, with polls showing that increasing numbers of Americans now regard it as a civil rights issue. That's overwhelmingly true among the young, no matter their region or background.
Something similar may be occurring when it comes to immigration reform. As a Times/USC poll reported Sunday, nearly half of California's likely voters have a favorable view of immigrants, including those without papers. Fully 59% said that undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked here for at least two years should be allowed to remain. That's particularly significant because California is home to more immigrants than any other state.
You could catch a glimpse of this new consensus Sunday at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, one of those places where the better angels of our city's nature tend to speak most clearly. Dolores, set among public housing projects, is among Los Angeles' poorest Roman Catholic parishes and long has been run by the Jesuits, the largest and most influential of the church's religious orders. Sunday, hundreds of people of all ages and ethnicities — parishioners, students at the order's schools and lay associates of its social justice initiatives — gathered to assist at a Mass on behalf of comprehensive immigration reform. As one of the celebrants, Homeboy Industries' Father Gregory Boyle, put it, they were there to "to imagine a circle of compassion and then to imagine no one standing outside that circle."
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Promoting public awareness of the need for fairness in immigration policy particularly as it relates to the rights of same-sex bi-national couples in the United States who seek equal immigration rights; Providing information regarding political issues relating to gay immigration equality issues, rights and policy.
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