Rep. Gutierrez Responds to State of the Union

Today, Representative Luis Gutierrez (IL), author of the CIR ASAP bill introduced in December in the House, wrote a powerful op-ed piece in the Huffington Post.

Rep. Gutierrez expressed concern that President Obama "did not go far enough for the four million American citizen children whose parents face deportation; the millions of Americans waiting to be reunited with loved ones overseas; hardworking Americans whose security is undermined in the workplace; women who are physically and sexually exploited on the floors of meatpacking plants; or the $1.5 trillion lacking from our Gross Domestic Product, all in the absence of real reform."

He argues, "Congress cannot wait for the President to lay out our timeline for comprehensive reform." His bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009, would fix the broken immigration system by keeping families together, allowing immigrants to integrate more fully into society, and protecting immigrants from detention.

To show to Congress that you support comprehensive immigration reform, urge your representative to co-sponsor CIR ASAP.

I'll leave you with one other quote from Rep. Gutierrez's article. He writes:

"They care that we do the job we've been elected to do. But if we walk away from the tough fights --like immigration reform-- because it's hard or because it's politically risky, we're not just writing our own political eulogy; we're sentencing millions of families to a life of injustice."