With chants of “Reform now,” and “The people united, would
never be defeated,” local immigration rights supporters
filled the halls of St. Charles Borromeo School in Arlington
April 2 to convince people to join them in urging Congress to
pass a comprehensive immigration reform.
At the press conference, dozens of people carrying signs
asked the community to join them April 10 at the Washington
rally for immigration reform that would offer a path to
citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living
in the United States.
“We have worked with many local leaders. Faiths have come
together to make this marvelous dream a reality,” said Father
Jose E. Hoyos, director of the Arlington diocesan Spanish
Apostolate, who encouraged the community to come out for the
rally.
Father Hoyos and other religious representatives participated
in the press conference to show that many faiths support a
just immigration reform.
“We are not talking about illegal people. These are human
beings, not numbers,” Father Hoyos said in Spanish. “To all
those who are already American citizens, let’s support those
who are not. Let’s not be satisfied with saying that we are
citizens and leave others behind.”
Walter Tejada, chairman of the Arlington County Board, asked
Northern Virginians to protect the American tradition of
family, worship and political participation by stopping
deportations and keeping families together.
“There are some things in life that transcend whatever
personal preferences that we may have and comprehensive
immigration reform is the thing that unites all of us,”
Tejada said at the press conference.
Rally organizers expect tens of thousands of people,
including immigrants’ families, and labor and immigrant
rights supporters to make their demands clear to Congress at
the U.S. Capitol. Many of the people at the rally will come
from Virginia, Maryland and Washington, said Gustavo Torres,
the president of CASA in Action, one of the nonprofits
organizing the rally.
Local organizers added that showing up at the rally was even
more important now that the Senate announced they are close
to reaching some kind of immigration reform. The details of
this bipartisan progress in drafting a law to reform the
immigration system in the U.S. are still unknown.
Immigration rights supporters, including the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops, are asking for a reform that includes a
clear path to citizenship for the undocumented, a future flow
worker program and a family-based immigration reform.
Father Hoyos said that the rally was the best venue to defend
immigrants’ human rights and added that the church, as a
beacon of morality, should participate.
“Our Bishop (Paul S. Loverde) has given us his support to
participate in these rallies, so we can welcome our people,
our communities of immigrants, who are the majority of those
who come to church,” Father Hoyos told the Catholic Herald.
“Also, the Gospel tells us that when a country welcomes the
stranger, it becomes blessed. And I think that the United
States will receive many blessings.”
The press conference ended with a prayer thanking God for
arriving to the “historic moment when reform is possible” and
asking for “courage and persistence to go to the streets and
ask for justice.”
Negro can be reached at [email protected]
or on Twitter @MNegroACH.
