By Kyra DeBlaker-Gebhard*
The General Commission on Religion and Race and faith leaders across the country continue their push to see comprehensive immigration reform addressed before year’s end and President Barack Obama added his voice to that call Thursday. President Obama spoke to an audience at American University School of International Service in Washington, D.C., and asked Congress to address the need for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
Bishop Carcaño, who met with White House officials to discuss immigration reform in May, feels that there are significant “human consequences of an inadequate, outdated [immigration] system at our borders and in our congregations, schools, workplaces and service programs.”
Stalled efforts to reform broken immigration policies at the national level, coupled with ill-conceived legislation at the state-level, has driven faith leaders and the president to demand action now.
“Reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special interest wrangling,” said Obama. He addressed Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law, which requires law enforcement to investigate immigration status when making a lawful stop, detention, or arrest, saying it has “the potential of violating the rights of citizens and legal residents, because of what they look like or how they sound.”
“Our task,” said the president, “is to make our national laws work. To shape our system to be a nation of laws and immigrants… and get passed the false debates that divide the country rather than bring it together.”
General Commission on Religion and Race Vice President Bishop Minerva Carcano has been critical of the new law, which takes effect at the end of July. She has said that this law is about more than just Hispanics. "It’s about Tongans, Filipinos, and the possibility that every cultural group of this country will be targeted, singled out for persecution because of the passage of the Arizona bill.”
*Kyra DeBlaker-Gebhard is a contract writer and web specialist for the General Commission on Religion and Race.
