{"id":935,"date":"2010-03-22T02:45:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T09:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=935"},"modified":"2010-03-22T02:45:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T09:45:11","slug":"big-rally-in-dc-for-immigration-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/22\/big-rally-in-dc-for-immigration-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Rally in DC for Immigration Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a big issue, but one that needs to be tackled ASAP.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"Immigration\"<\/a> With many eyes focused on the health care debate seven blocks away at the U.S. Capitol, an estimated 200,000 people rallied for immigration reform on the National Mall<\/strong>. They came from California and Florida and the neighborhoods around Florida Avenue in Washington, DC. Like the \u201cmega-marches\u201d that exploded on the American political scene in the spring of 2006 \u2013 and remain the largest series of demonstrations in American history \u2013 the message at this massive rally was clear and loud: fix our broken immigration system, stop the deportations that are splitting up families, and allow immigrants to come to the U.S. legally and to earn legal status if they are already here illegally<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The President, who by all reports, was feverishly working the phones with Democratic House Members on health care, delivered a video address to affirm his commitment to passing immigration reform and added the magic words \u201cthis year\u201d that the crowd and organizers were hoping to hear.<\/p>\n

The strongest and most enthusiastically received remarks came from Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the only Latino in the Senate, and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), the point person for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on immigration reform and the most visible leader on the issue in the Congress, but dozens of Democratic House lawmakers — and one Republican, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida \u2013 made their way to the stage\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

I support the demonstrators aims.  While I agree with critics that illegals should not be here illegally, they wouldn\u2019t be here were it not for the willingness of US corporations to exploit their labor.  It is those corporations, along with most of the GOP, who want exploitation to continue, that are most strongly opposed to immigration reform.  We need to give these people a path to citizenship.  I would like to see an immediate halt to deportation of those who have not committed crimes while here.<\/font><\/p>\n

I find it particularly disturbing that this rally received far less media coverage that the tiny gathering of obscene Teabaggers.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a big issue, but one that needs to be tackled ASAP. With many eyes focused on the health care debate seven blocks away at the U.S. Capitol, an estimated 200,000 people rallied for immigration reform on the National Mall. They came from California and Florida and the neighborhoods around Florida Avenue in Washington, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}