‘Coming Out’ as Undocumented Citizen Encouraged by One Chicago Leader

A report from the Newstips Blog:

In These Times interviews Chicago activist Tania Unzueta, saying she “may be America’s most visible undocumented activist.”

Unzueta directs Radio Arte’s youth training program and helped found the Immigrant Youth Justice League. She was one of five undocumented students who sat in at Senator John McCain’s Tucson office last month to protest new anti-immigrant laws in Arizona, and demanded passage of the DREAM Act.  (She talked with Newstips about it the next day.)

Unzueta talks about drawing inspiration from SNCC’s youth-led civil disobedience, and from Harvey Milk about the importance of “coming out.” Asked about the DREAM Act, she cites her work with undocumented students at Radio Arte:

“I have students who sit in my office and talk about how they can’t go to school, how they’re scared their mom might get deported, how they can’t get a drivers license, how they wish they could study abroad, how their grandmother is dying in Mexico and they can’t visit her – because they’re undocumented.”

About immigration reform:  “It’s important to have a system that acknowledges that there’s a need in the United States for the labor immigrant workers provide, that provides  a way for people who are pulled into the economy to do so legally, and that acknowledges that those workers are people who have families and their families need access to education.

“There needs to be a way for people who are already here to become legal, and for those who come because they’re pulled by the economy to have a pathway to citizenship.”

In the same issue, ITT also looks at ties between Arizona politicians and the private prison industry, which supports efforts to replicate Arizona’s SB 1070 in other states.

“The immigration dragnet created at SB 1070 [and similar bills] will greatly increase the numbers of undocumented residents who are arrested and jailed.  And that bodes well for the bottom lines of private detention corporations such as [the Corrections Corporation of America] and Geo Group.

ITT reports that a vast majority of CCA’s federal lobbying disclosure reports dealt with immigration policy and Homeland Security and ICE appropriations.

In the Arizona Republic, Dennis Wagner offers a detailed reality check for those who argue that securing borders must precede comprehensive immigration reform.

“Anyone with a minimal knowledge or understanding about the nearly 2,000-mile swath of land between Mexico and the United States realizes that requiring a secure border establishes an impossible standard.”

And perhaps an excuse to avoid dealing with real solutions for what advocates call a broken immigration system.