Remember immigrant contributions
Bienvenidos a nuestra casa was the phrase repeated by representatives from Somos un Pueblo Unido welcoming the standing-room-only audience of yellow and blue T-shirts, ACLU members, legislators and people looking down from the balcony to a rally on Immigrant Day of Action that took place Jan. 27 at the Rotunda in the Roundhouse.
For the past 17 years, Somos has organized an Immigrant Day of Action that starts with an early legislative training of groups coming from Hobbs, Roswell, Española, Gallup, Farmington and Santa Fe. We study all the complicated steps necessary for a bill to become a law. We look up the name of our legislators and their room numbers and we proceed to lobby them about issues important to our communities.
This year’s priorities are:
◆ House Bill 108 and Senate Bill 107, which would prevent state agencies from disclosing personal information such as sexual preference and immigration status unless legally required by a court order.
◆ Recognizing that immigrants pay almost $70 million in state and local taxes, it’s only fair that the Legislature pass House Bill 148 to extend the state’s working families tax credit to immigrant taxpayers.
◆ We support Senate Bill 4 to allocate an extra $8 million to census outreach to make sure that every person in the state is counted.
◆ Money should be allocated to pay for more investigators from the Department of Workforce Solutions to help resolve a backlog of 1,900 open claims of wage theft.
I was a 50-year-old immigrant when I finally learned how a state law is passed and participated in getting the first “driver’s licenses for all” legislation passed. It was a feeling of together we can do anything. Well almost, since it takes a lot of work and patience.
Today, young immigrant parents and their children in our city and all over New Mexico are engaged in a civic process which affects their daily lives. This is how we resist the constant xenophobic messages from Washington, D.C.
As I listened to the leaders speak in the Rotunda, I couldn’t help but think: She could be our president in a not-too-distant future, speaking from the steps of the White House saying to the people of this country, Bienvenidos a nuestra casa.