Progress Illinois

For the past few years, Cristina Garcia (pictured right) has hounded officials in Springfield and brought the campaign for humane immigration reform to the streets of Chicago. Last week, she took her advocacy to a whole new level. Through a national program hatched by the Center for Community Change (nicely profiled by NPR), Garcia and a team of organizers from Illinois headed to D.C. to lobby from the perspective of “what’s really happening on the streets of Chicago.”

Knowing that a former South Side community organizer lives in the White House gave the 30-year-old Erie Neighborhood House staffer more confidence about the prospect of change in the halls of Congress. Also slated to take part in the program are staffers from Organization of the NorthEast, Chicago Workers’ Collaborative, as well as veteran organizer Ed Shurna of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. We caught up with Garcia on Friday to hear about the experience. Here are some excerpts from our interview:

AC: Did get any commitments?

CG: We got a commitment from [Sen. Dick] Durbin’s office that he’ll reintroduce the DREAM Act this year. That would help undocumented students get financial aid if they’re already in school and put them on the path to [legal] status.

AC: How do you think your pitch compared with the corporate lobbyists who approach members of Congress everyday?

CG: We were taking stories of real people … We told them about the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raid at the Discount Mall [in Chicago last year]. We gave the nitty gritty on how ICE locked the doors and threw people against the walls while they checked for ID. This is happening in front of children and elderly people. We think this is a violation of civil rights.  There are children being left at school with no one to pick them up after the raids.

AC: You’re a member of the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), which called for a federal moratorium on raids and deportations during the November election. How hopeful are you that this will happen soon?

CG: If we don’t speak up they’re not going to just give this to us, even though they said they would during the campaign. We want to see immigration reform on Obama’s agenda. We want him to make a public statement that he’ll address the issue this year. [...]  We can’t be quiet. We need to continue making noise. Change will happen.

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