IMMIGRATION REFORM DOABLE: COALITION NEEDED

Now that our national fiscal issues have been resolved for at least a few months, it's time to enact solid comprehensive immigration reform.

It's interesting that here in California more Republican House members are moving towards a comprehensive approach.  Why?  Because so many of them represent agricultural areas of the State, and their farmer constituents are begging for help because they can't find enough local labor to help with all aspects of the agricultural year, especially at harvest time.

We need to reach out more proactively to all of our House members, including more conservative members--Democrat or Republican.  Our best allies will come from the broad agricultural community:  individual growers, farm organizations, State Farm Bureaus, and the like.

Perhaps we have been too narrow in reaching out to diverse groups to form a broader coalition to get comprehensive immigration reform.  It's interesting that several States which have passed local restrictive laws dealing with immigrants have found great opposition from their agricultural groups.  A few examples:  Colorado, Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia.  We have achieved new partners from those State Farm groups, as well as other Church communities.  In the South, many Evangelical Churches have rallied in support of our immigrants and immigration reform.

Let's proceed forward actively to recruit new partners and collaborators as we make a renewed effort to pass decent and comprehensive immigration reform.