Mesoamerican Migrant Movement Press Release

Mesoamerican Migrant Movement
Original Americas Program Translation 

Mexico City, January 21, 2013. – Forty-four years since his assassination, we remember Martin Luther King’s dream of a day when his four children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Today more than 11 million undocumented migrants will have to wait for a tortuously slow legislative process to recognize their contributions, from political to fiscal, in the United States.

Barak Obama, thanks to the Latino vote, will be sworn in for the second time as President. The Latino vote was the pointer on the scale that weighed in Obama’s favor and granted him victory after a dead heat election. During his inauguration, thousands of voters will be protesting in Chicago, demanding an immediate moratorium on deportations and separation of families: While Obama orates promises of immigration reform, undocumented migrants in the United States are being harassed by a new wave of attacks, raids on workplaces, arrests and deportations carried out in the days and weeks subsequent to his reelection.

During Obama’s first administration, the numbers of deportations add up to more than 1.5 million in four years. From now until the long awaited immigration reform materializes, an estimated half a million more people will be deported unless Obama changes the current policy. It is therefore urgent to establish the moratorium on deportations and separation of families meanwhile the immigration reform law is approved and regulated for its implementation.   It is difficult to understand why the President is deporting the hundreds of thousands of people he wants to legalize.  The unconstitutional mass deportations have caused the painful separation of hundreds of thousands of families whose children are citizens and have lived in the United States for years.