Immigrant Advocates Sharpen New Stradegies to Push Reform

A sense of frustration that President Barack Obama is moving too slowly and too hesitantly on comprehensive immigration reform has moved immigrant advocates to rethink some of their tactics and ideas and to rev up the machine that succeeded last year in voter registration and citizenship campaign to lobby legislators. Much of this came out during a workshop at the convention of the National Council of La Raza last week in Chicago. Mostly the stress was put on mobilizing the troops for the lobbying, but there were other ideas. One was a tour of the country, already organized by Rep Luis Gutierrez and others, to demonstrate the hardships of deportation on families and to an end to factory raids. Another, especially in view of a legalization process that would include onerous fines, is to pay them off by community service. (See Associated Press report.)