Leonard J. Rivera, Esquire

I had the privilege of attending the 6th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Community Breakfast in Kennett Square. The speaker was J. Phillip Thompson, PhD, and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The reason I enjoyed Dr. Thompson's message was because it made me think. The room was filled with several hundred people from varied cultural backgrounds of life, black, white, and Latino, all honoring the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Thompson shared with the audience how Dr. King advocated on behalf of the black community in a way that still resonates with everyone today.

Dr. Thompson explained that many of the problems in the 1960's were blamed on the African American community. He stated that today many problems are blamed on immigrants. Some people complain that the immigrants will cause unemployment to increase. Others claim that immigrants cannot support themselves and this places a strain on local economies. In reality, neither complaint has validity. The vast majority of immigrants perform jobs that United States citizens have no desire to do and most immigrants support themselves with little or no government assistance.

Dr. Thompson drew the comparison between the African-American community in the 1960's and the immigrants today to demonstrate that the Latino community is being singled out and discriminated against without a true appreciation or understanding of the sacrifices and fears an immigrant confronts everyday. He asked the question, "Why would an immigrant want to leave his family and children behind, travel thousands of miles over a desert at night, risking his own well-being, to take a job that pays $6.00 an hour? If he had the choice, would this be what he chooses?" Given Dr. Thompson's provocative comparison I began to wonder, will Congress pass Comprehensive Immigration reform and acknowledge that the immigration laws need to change?

Recently, Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the in-coming Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the Senate to enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform and said on January 4, 2007, "as the new Congress begins, we have a tremendous opportunity before us to enact fair Comprehensive Immigration Reform. It is time for bipartisan action. Accordingly, I join Senators from both sides of the aisle to call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and will work to enact it. We need to put aside the mean-spiritedness and short-sighted policies driven by fear and recognize the dignity of those whose work contributes to reinvigorating America. Consistent with our heritage as a nation of immigrants we need to bring people out of the shadows."

Last year, the Republican-controlled House prevented President Bush from reforming immigration laws. The 2006 elections changed the face of Congress giving Democrats control of Congress for the first time since 1993. As the one-hundred and tenth Congress began its first full week in session, Comprehensive Immigration Reform was not in the first one hundred hours of action. However, it appears this Democratic Congress will address Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Members of Congress have already introduced a flurry of immigration related legislation.

On January 23, 2007, President Bush delivered the State of the Union speech and again extolled the virtues of Comprehensive Immigration Reform. President Bush stated, "We need to uphold the great tradition of the melting pot that welcomes and assimilates new arrivals. We need to resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country without animosity and without amnesty. Convictions run deep in this Capitol when it comes to immigration. Let us have a serious, civil, and conclusive debate, so that you can pass, and I can sign, Comprehensive Immigration Reform into law."

As Comprehensive Immigration Reform continues to be debated in Congress, I will keep you up-to-date on the status of how Congress is addressing the needs of immigrants and mistreatment of the African-American community in the 1960's is comparable to the mistreatment of immigrants today employers. I agree with Dr. Thompson,. It is expected the one-hundred and tenth Congress will enact Comprehensive Immigration Reform to remedy this mistreatment. The only question is when.

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