VivirLatino

So here I am at the Reform Immigration for America Summit in DC and the opening luncheon inside the Victory Tent was filled with people chanting Si Se Puede/Yes we Can! The message from all the speakers was clear, yes there is alot of work to do but that ultimately victory will be ours. Pero what does victory look like?

Maria Socorro Pesqueira, from Mujeres Latinas in Accion de Chicago spoke of her own personal experiences coming from an immigrant family and looked at the immigrant woman’s experience specifically. She gave examples of immigrant women whose families were fragmented by an enforcement first immigration agenda, an agenda that according to Socorro Pesqueira, left one child in the streets calling our for her detained and eventually deported father. As a mother, who is here with my youngest, this brought me to tears and even writing about it now makes my eyes well up.

The underlying assumption though, or my perception of it from the RI4A Summit and from the immigrant reform movement in general is that things are different now with Obama in the White House. Are they really?

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