WHAT: Undocumented families rally at the Arizona Democratic Headquarters and ask the party to endorse the Arizona Dream Act Coalition’s demands to President Obama and ask him to use his executive authority to bring relief to the 11 million undocumented immigrants while we keep fighting for immigration reform in Congress.
WHEN: August 25, 2014 at 10am MST
WHERE: 2910 North Central Ave · Phoenix, AZ 85012
SPEAKERS:
· Korina Iribe: “I’m A Key Voter Campaign” organizer for the Arizona Dream Act Coalition
· Mayra Rodriguez: Citizen whose husband has been denied a Stay of Removal by ICE and could be deported any time.
· Francisco Luna: Co-Chair of the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project who will speak to the specific demands from the LGBT community to Obama.
Phoenix, AZ- A couple of weeks ago, President Obama spoke about the slim to no chances of Congress to pass an immigration reform bill this year and signaled that his administration will be taking steps to fix what he can through an executive action. Regardless of the millions of deportations and our broken immigration system, the partisan gridlock in congress did not allow for any solutions to take place. As we near that midterm elections, we still see both parties playing political games with the lives of the undocumented community and our families.
Republicans have shown over and over again with their antagonistic approach in which they are taking the side of their extreme right and have adopted “self-deportation” as their platform. On the other hand, the Arizona Democratic party is not standing up for our community and in some instances, they have asked for Obama to not act as they believe an executive action will affect their elections.
According to a recent Latino Decisionspoll, if the president does nothing on immigration, 54 percent of Latino voters would be less likely to vote for Democrats, and 57 percent would be less motivated about going to the polls.
If the president takes bold action, more than 60 percent of voters would be more enthusiastic to support Democrats. Even more relevant, the poll noted failure to sign an executive order on immigration would «significantly depress turnout» among Latinos in 2014 and beyond.
«Today we will send a simple message to the Democratic Party. If they want the Latino community to be motivated to vote, they need to stand up with us and demand Obama to give relief to the 11 million of us,» they pointed out.
