The Face of Immigration Reform

By SEAN QUIGLEY

An immigration advocacy bus tour on Tuesday embarked on the last leg of their trip to Washington to meet with a bipartisan group of senators and press for an overhaul of the immigration system focusing on family reunification, rights of same-sex couples, worker protection and easing deportations.

Organized by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), immigration advocates and family members packed St. Peters Church on the Upper East side to bid farewell and good luck to 50 immigrant families as they wrap up a 19- state bus tour to gain national support for substantial immigration reform.

“Now is the time, now is the year to pass just and humane immigration reform for everybody,” said Daniel Coats of FIRM. “to ensure a path to citizenship, not an obstacle course.”

Tears, laughs, and multilingual cheers and chants filled the church as families and spouses of detained immigrants and undocumented workers told their stories, which will be bought to senators on Wednesday in order to put a face on families who have been torn apart due to deportation policies.

“This is my country, and I am so helpless,” air jordan 3 said 12-year-old American citizen Nushin Tarannum, whose family has been faced with insurmountable financial hardship and depression as her father who is from Bangladesh has been in detention for over a year. “I feel like I have no future.”

Ravi Ragbir, who emigrated from Trinidad, has been a lawful permanent resident for nearly two decades. Now, because of a minor conviction he faces permanent exile from the United States. “My daughters dream of having a father with her is broken, “ he said. “My wife’s dream of being with her husband is broken, because the system is broken.”

The group, although widely multicultural acted as one family, lending each other support, speaking each other’s languages, all united by the same hardships and desires to create a change in the immigration system so that families are no longer torn from their loved ones, and law abiding people are not forced to live with the constant fear of deportation.