by Ulises Silva
“Immigration reform isn’t dead.”
That’s the emphatic statement made by Mayra López, one of TRP’s head organizers in the ongoing fight for comprehensive immigration reform. Despite the setbacks, including the partial government shutdown, TRP, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and other partner organizations continue to work alongside concerned neighbors in a series of actions aimed at pressuring local legislators to pass this historic legislature.
Among the more poignant actions was a town hall action organized by TRP, Southwest Organizing Project, and Polish Initiative of Chicago at the office of Representative Dan Lipinski, the only Illinois Democrat who has not supported immigration reform. The action, which took place on September 5, involved 50 mothers, U.S. citizen children with parents in deportation proceedings, and faith leaders confronting Representative Lipinski at his town hall meeting to demand that he support immigration reform.
Similar actions have been held against other legislators, including a sit-in at the office of Representative Peter Roskam, one of the state’s Republican leaders accused of holding immigration reform hostage.
“It’s important to keep this work alive, we have come a long way in our fight for immigration reform and this is not the time to give up,” says López. “We can’t afford to let our elected officials forget how important comprehensive immigration reform is for our families.”
The largest action over the past two months took place on October 12, 2013, when 8,000 people, union supporters, and immigration rights allies came together to march on downtown Chicago. The turnout far exceeded what the organizers had anticipated, a sign that people remain committed to fighting for immigration reform.
While López reiterates the importance of remaining hopeful, she feels renewed urgency as the current administration is fast approaching an ominous milestone.
“If the current level of deportations continue,” she says, “we will have reached more than 2 million deportations by the end of the year, which would be the most under any other administration in our country’s history. These are families that are being torn apart because we have a broken immigration policy that criminalizes people instead of recognizing their contributions.”
The economic impact of comprehensive immigration reform alone is staggering: it is estimated that such legislation would increase the U.S. gross domestic product to $1.5 trillion in the next decade, and increase federal, state, and local tax revenue by $109 billion over the next ten years. Yet it’s the human toll that organizers like López hope legislators will consider.
“More than 400,000 people are being deported each year,” she says, “and if we stopped that, those are hundreds of thousands of families and children that can finally live a life without the fear of being separated. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, especially those people who just come here in search of a better life and make their own sizable financial and cultural contributions to our country.”

Return to Nueva Vida October 2013 here.