Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition
310 Eighth Street, Suite 303 Oakland, California 94607
phone: 510-839-7598 fax: 510-465-1885 www.immigrantrights.org
Press Statement: March 8, 2007
Contact: Evelyn Sanchez, Advocacy Coordinator, Bay Area
Immigrant Rights Coalition
(510) 839-7598
Immigrant Rights Advocates Travel to Washington DC
Seek Solution to Broken Immigration System
San Francisco, CA – The Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC) will be sending two representatives – Safa Shanneb of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab American Legal Services and Evelyn Sanchez, Advocacy Coordinator for BAIRC - to Washington DC to highlight the dire need for a new and just immigration law that will bring relief to immigrants as part of an advocacy campaign organized by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
“Immigrants in the US are increasingly vulnerable as states and cities pass exclusionary laws that deny needed services and ICE raids detain thousands of immigrants - ripping families apart and leaving US citizen children without parents. The issue of immigration is now a severe human rights crisis that needs immediate resolution” says Sanchez.
BAIRC members will also speak to the current, broken immigration system which is used to criminalize immigrants and violate their constitutional laws. “Since 9/11 immigration law has been used as a primary instrument for racial profiling for all immigrants, particularly Arab and Muslim Americans,” explains Shanneb.
Current immigration law has undermined the enormous economic, cultural, and entrepreneurial contributions immigrants make to the US. Fawad Husain, a Pakistani national now living in Sweden is a perfect example. He immigrated to the US in 1994. By 2003 he had earned a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Missouri, a BA in Physics from Central Missouri State University, and worked for 5 years as a software engineer.
“I contributed to the economy by paying up to four times the tuition fee for studying at university. Besides that, I made plenty of friends and I felt like I actually belonged to this [the US],” explains Hussain. However, when his mother fell ill, Hussain had to return to Pakistan and lost his visa. In reapplying he was told it may take up to two months but Hussain says “it took forever.” Finally, Hussain gave up and settled in Sweden where he is obtaining a Masters in Electrical Engineering.
Hussain like so many others is stuck in a perpetual backlog without a legal channel to enter the country. In the case of Hussain he left behind a bank account, a car, clothes, photos, a computer, a television, and more importantly an adopted home. “It was like a dream. Somebody just suddently took me out of my life and put me in unfamiliar conditions.”
Immigrant rights advocates are hopeful the 110th Congress will be able to fix the current broken immigration system with a new one that will legalize the undocumented, eliminate the family visa backlog, increase legal channels by which immigrants can enter the country, and protect the civil and labor rights of all immigrants.
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The Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC) is a broad-based coalition of individuals and organizations working to build a unified voice for immigrant rights that transforms and improves the lives of immigrants. For more information, www.immigrantrights.org
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