Message from UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez: Immigrants should keep preparing for relief under President’s executive order
A Republican-appointed Texas judge who is hostile to the undocumented issued an injunction on Tuesday, Feb. 17 temporarily blocking President Obama’s executive order on immigration. But the UFW and UFW Foundation remain confident the President will prevail in the courts, and we are encouraging immigrants to continue preparing to be ready when administrative relief becomes available.
We will keep fighting for administrative action protecting immigrants, keep seeking enactment by Congress of comprehensive immigration reform and carry on weekly UFW Foundation sessions providing the undocumented with vital information despite the delay caused by the federal court in Brownsville. Also continuing to help immigrants win new rights and protections are the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the foundation’s nine-station Radio Campesina educational radio network reaching 500,000 daily listeners, most of them immigrations, in four states. They are sister organizations with the UFW in the farm worker movement.
This judge’s ruling is another example of Republican efforts to intimidate and scare off the undocumented from coming forward, registering and applying for work permits. These anti-immigrant politicians can’t reverse the President’s executive action, a victory following years of UFW activism in pushing for comprehensive immigration reform through marches, demonstrations, lobbying and meetings with President Obama and White House officials.
We urge Republicans to abandon their political games that hurt millions of hardworking, taxpaying immigrants and their families, and help us pass legislation such as the comprehensive reform bill approved by the Senate on a bipartisan vote in June 2013. Similar compromise proposals, negotiated by the UFW and the nation’s major agricultural employer associations, have passed the U.S. Senate multiple times over the last decade. The same proposal has won majority support in the House of Representatives, even though House GOP leaders have refused to permit a vote on the measure. The UFW will not rest until the President’s executive action goes into affect and we win permanent immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Arturo S. Rodriguez, President
United Farm Workers of America