Free (Immigration Reform) T-Shirt!

One of the organizations behind the hundred-thousand-plus immigration march on Washington a few weeks ago was Reform Immigration For America. This group is dedicated to reforming our unjust immigration policies to benefit American workers and our immigrant neighbors, together.

Our vision of reform includes immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens working shoulder to shoulder to achieve better wages, working conditions, and labor protections—making sure everyone is playing by the same set of rules so that it is harder for unscrupulous employers to cheat immigrants and therefore harder for everyone to be cheated. We need to build faith in our immigration system so that people respect the process and so that the process respects them. That’s our vision for a stronger America. - Reform Immigration for America

And Reform Immigration for America is offering a free T-shirt! So, go get your free shirt.

Immigration reform is going to be a steep climb. For all that Lindsay Graham is meeting with Charles Schumer on this subject, I am suspicious of his willingness to vote for reform when the time comes to do so. With the nativist undertones of the Tea Party movement that so dominates the discussion in Republican circles, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible to get to 60 votes in the Senate. And immigration reform is not a deficit-reduction policy (though an argument can be made that it would reduce the deficit), so reconciliation is not exactly an option. And if you think the air was filled with lies and vitriol over health care reform, wait until you hear what's said about immigration.

I do not know whether we can build a winning coalition for Immigration Reform in 2010, but I know that in trying to do so, we will lay the groundwork for a solution in the near future. And that is worth the effort, because we are all immigrants, we are all Americans.