Immigrant-Rights Movement Takes to the Streets

(Seventh in Border Lines series on the Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)

"Immigrant-rights" as a defining message in American politics received new prominence when millions of immigrants took to the streets in March-May 2006 to demand the defeat of the new anti-immigrant bills emerging from the House of Representatives and its restrictionist Immigration Reform Caucus.

The marches, organized by local immigrant-rights groups and ethnic organizations in close cooperation with Spanish-media outlets, piggybacked on the labor organizing of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides a few years early. Although depending heavily on the support of nonimmigrant groups such as labor, the church, and progressive activists, the marches that brought millions of immigrants to the streets were largely a self-organized response by immigrants to the deepening immigrant crackdown.

Paralleling the new activism by immigrants was a growing backlash movement that found harbor within the Republican Party. At the same time that CIR advocates were organizing, educating, and lobbying, the congressional Republicans, working closely with the restrictionist institutes in Washington, were mounting new initiatives to ramp up border control and interior immigration enforcement. 


Despite statements from the White House favoring a CIR that included legalization, the Bush administration was demonstrating its effective commitment to an “attrition through enforcement” policy by unleashing the Department of Homeland Security on the immigrant population.

The House’s approval of the Border Protection, Anti terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 signalled that the climate for immigrants might seriously worsen rather than improve as the prospects for CIR diminished. The December 2005 approval of the draconian "Sensenbrenner Bill," known after its sponsor, Cong. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) sparked a wave of immigrant-rights marches in early 2006.

The Sensenbrenner bill, which would have made all illegal immigrants felons, never made it through the Senate – which the immigrant-rights movement chalked up as a victory for its mobilization.

While CCIR was focused primarily on strategies to build support for CIR, numerous immigrant-rights groups, including many who were part of the 150-member coalition, were more focused on battling the rise of anti-immigrant vigilante groups like the Minutemen and other manifestations of the anti-immigrant backlash movement. 


The immigrant-rights marches from February through May 2006 brought unprecedented numbers of immigrants into the streets to demand an end to the mounting immigrant crackdown. But behind the apparent unity of these millions of immigrants and supporters protesting harsh immigration enforcement measures unleashed by the Bush administration and proposed by Congress belied deepening divisions among immigrant-rights activists. 


The “We Are America” and “No Human Being is Illegal” placards papered over differences in tactics and politics. "When the dust settles, we will see who the leaders are," said Jesse Diaz, an original leader of the March 25 Coalition that inspired the Los Angeles march, which put the immigrant movement on the map. 


Diaz told the Washington Post that while mainstream immigrant organizations were "complacently ignoring what was happening in Washington" last December, his coalition diverted its fight with the Minutemen in California and Arizona to organize protests against House legislation that would criminalize illegal immigrants and those who help them. 


"Where were they then?" questioned Diaz in reference to many of the leading groups in the CCIR coalition. Despite many internal divisions over politics, principles, and strategies, the immigrant-rights marches gave all immigrant-rights organizations a new sense of power and a belief that history was on their side. 


Emboldened by the Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides, during which immigrant workers were praised as the vanguard of a new civil rights and workers movement, immigrant-rights groups were further empowered and encouraged by the marches of spring 2006. In their December 2006 paper for the University of California (Davis), “The Immigrant Rights Marches of 2006 and the Prospects for a New Civil Rights Movement,” prominent immigration scholars Bill Ong Hing and Kevin R. Johnson summarized the new immigrant enthusiasm and hope.

“Activists proclaimed that the marches represented ‘the new civil rights movement.’ The leaders of the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, for example, saw themselves as the vanguard of the first civil rights movement of the twenty-first century….Many activists believed that the anti-immigrant tide that had dominated the national debate since the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, might have turned.”

Echoing a widespread belief among many leftist immigrant-rights activists, writer Justin Akers Chacón proclaimed, “Equal rights for immigrants would also help revitalize a labor movement in crisis, as immigrant workers are offering the best hope for all workers in this country.” In May 2006, many immigrant-rights leaders – most of whom were U.S. citizens – believed that mass mobilization was the best guarantee for the type of liberal policy reform they were demanding. As Chacón, the coauthor of No One Is Illegal, asserted:

“Only when the politicians are confronted by a mass movement of workers and students, backed by protests, strikes, walkouts, and other forms of direct political action, and one that doesn’t concede leadership to liberal power brokers, will they reluctantly accept our demands. That is why we must continue to build the immigrant rights movement independent of the Democratic Party and of the bipartisan legislative proposals that serve Corporate America. We must continue to organize and mobilize where we have the most power: in the workplaces, schools, and communities.”

This type of political rhetoric continued and the triumphalism that accompanied such “power to the people” policy analysis persisted on the left-wing of the immigrant-rights movement. But as the immigrant crackdown intensified and the immigrant demonstrators left the streets, divisions among the immigrant-rights activists grew and the path toward CIR became fraught with obstacles and compromises.

Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: Uncertain Path Toward Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Immigrant Groups Raise Voices for Immigrant Rights

(Sixth in a Border Lines Series on the Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)


The labor-sponsored Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides of 2003 and the CCIR-sponsored New American Freedom Summer of 2004 contributed to a mounting conviction among immigrant-rights organizations that they were the vanguard of rising workers and civil rights movements in America.


With generous foundation backing from such foundations as Atlantic Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and other liberal foundations committed to empowering the country’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable sectors, the immigrant-rights movement has over the past thirty years, and especially over the past six years, become the chosen instrument to lead the popular and congressional campaign for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR).


 Even after the total defeat of this campaign in mid-2007, when the Senate declined to move a compromise CIR bill forward to a vote, the same constellation of groups that have been the public voice for liberal immigration policy for the past few decades is being funded by these foundations to carry the CIR campaign into the Obama administration with their same immigrant-rights messaging and the focus on the same constituencies. 


There is no doubt that the country benefits from having a strong immigrant-rights movement with DC institutes and grassroots networks spread across the country given the escalating scale of immigrant human rights abuses. But the history of failure in creating public and congressional support for liberal immigration reform should raise questions about the near sacrosanct strategy of transforming the immigrant-rights movement into an immigration reform movement.


Labor, Catholic Church, Democratic Party -- Major Players


At the turn of the 21st century, immigrants represented the fastest growing segment of U.S. society, and major institutions and interests were eager to attract the million-plus immigrants who entered the U.S. each year into their fold. Labor, the Catholic Church, and the Democratic Party together with the Spanish-language media and corporations eager to attract mainly Latino consumers hovered around the booming immigrant advantage seeking advantage and mutual benefit.


In this mix were also left political groups that regarded the new mostly working class population with foreign roots as a new constituency that could revitalize the American left given their proclivity for popular organizing and their internationalist consciousness.


At a time when immigrants were experiencing a mounting anti-immigrant backlash, they also found themselves welcomed into America by a constellation of high-powered U.S. institutions that declared solidarity with their plight as a vulnerable population but at the same time a great potential for strengthening such core American institutions as organized labor, the Catholic Church, and the Democratic Party.


Labor, particularly unions that represented restaurant and other service workers, were reviving their memberships with immigrant workers, while the Catholic Church regarded immigrants, particularly Latinos, as likely new congregants, and the Democratic Party had a compelling interest in incorporating as many new immigrants into the voting rolls because they tended to vote Democratic.


The self-interest in the outreach efforts and policy pronouncement of these powerful institutions can’t be denied, but neither should the heartfelt bonds of solidarity and empathy be underestimated as motivating forces in this new convergence between immigrants and their institutional supporters.


All three institutional actors that contributed to the reemergence of the immigrant-rights movement in the 2002-2007 period had their own special interests – as well as humanitarian and political principles -- in seeing a CIR proposal move Similarly, leftist organizations regarded the burgeoning immigrant-rights movement and in particular their mass mobilizations as a catalyst for a united front campaign that could bring progressives of all stripes together to advance common agendas.


Certainly the mounting immigrant crackdown and the rising anti-immigrant backlash constituted the political context for immigrant mobilization during the Bush administration. But many of the prominent political features of this new organizing were hardly new. The demands for worker rights, an internationalist view of the immigration issue, the rights messaging, and even the sense that immigrant struggles constituted the cusp of a new political movement were echoes of 20th century movements.


Origins of Immigrant Rights Organizing


Tracing the immigrant-rights movement can take you back to the Palmer Raids of the 1920s or the key role that immigrants played in organizing many of the nation’s labor unions. But perhaps relevant and instructive to understanding the foundation of today’s immigrant-rights movement were the splits that developed in the Latino movements and organizations in the late 1960s.


Some close observers and activists in the immigrant-rights movement trace often trace the origins of the civil rights and worker themes of immigrant organizing to the emergence of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s, in particular to its leftist flank. Groups like El Congreso broke with more conservative Latino organization like LULAC in insisting that illegal immigrants were part of a larger rights movement that included both Mexican-Americans and Mexicans.


Bert Corona, the co-founder in 1968 of the Centro de Acción Social Autónomo-Hermandad General de Trabajadores and Congreso member, popularized the political principle that just as there should be unity among all workers – citizen and noncitizens – there should be unity among all Spanish-speaking people in the United States, no matter their citizenship status.


“An attack on one Spanish-speaking group was an attack on all," wrote Corona, a member of the Congreso. Recounting the history of the immigrant-rights movement, Mexico specialist Dan LaBotz points to the internationalist, class-based, and civil rights perspective that groups like Congreso and La Hermandad brought to the debate about immigrants among unions and ethnic groups.


Citing activist historian Arnoldo García, LaBotz wrote that these groups focused on the needs of "undocumented Mexican workers and their families" and brought to the struggle the "conjugation of a class base with social justice and liberation aspirations."


The CASA newspaper Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) carried on its masthead the slogan, "We are One because America [meaning the continent] is One." This type of new thinking among Chicano activists contributed to building a new conviction among all Latino organizations and even unions like the United Farmworkers that immigrant-rights issues were less of a threat to established Latino organizations and more of an opportunity to expand their base.


At the same time, though, this type of thinking about crossborder unity and class solidarity injected new tensions within Latino movements that were inclined toward mainstream, moderate, and nonconfrontational strategies.


Immigrant-rights as an organizing strategy received a boost in the early 1980s, largely because of the eventually success in beating back more restrictive immigration legislation, slowing down the pace of deportations, and finding strong allies among Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and struggling for their “rights” to remain in the country because of the devastating role of U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean Basin region.


In the mid-1990s, as U.S. immigration laws became more restrictive and punitive, an array of immigrant-rights groups and supporting legal networks arose to protect the rights of immigrants facing detention and deportation. Working with such groups as the National Lawyer Guild, ACLU, and the newly created Detention Watch Network, a constellation of immigrant-rights networks across the nation struggled to protect the due process rights of detained immigrants.


Although immigrants benefited from an array of immigrant-rights groups – including such prominent ones as Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Committee, National Capitol Area Immigration Coalition, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles – it was not until the Immigrant Workers Freedom Rides of 2003, the establishment of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform CCIR in late 2003 and the closely associated We are America Alliance in 2005 that the immigrant-rights movement emerged as a main player in immigration reform issues.


Typical of this conviction that immigrant organizing was at the forefront of a new wave of progressive, rights-oriented mobilization was an analysis by Carmellia Phillips of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights published by Political Research Associates in 2002.


More than simply responding to anti-immigrant groups and policies, the movement was “bringing immigrant rights into the larger movement for racial justice, labor rights, global economic equality, and human rights,” wrote Phillips.


She summarized a widely believed conviction among immigrant-rights activists when writing that the proper framework for understanding the immigration issue was not law enforcement but rather human rights. “We must work consciously and collaboratively to avoid falling back on arguments that do not support the rights of all immigrants or that divide immigrants based on legal status or national origin,” she wrote.


 Furthermore, “We must work to defend and expand human rights (which include labor, cultural, civil, social, environmental, and economic rights) for everyone, regardless of immigration status, and to recognize racial equality and justice as critical to expanding a progressive immigrant rights movement.”


Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: Immigrant Groups Raise Voices for Immigrant Rights

Immigrant-Rights Organizing 2003-2004

(Sixth in Border Lines series on the Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)

The creation of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) came on the heels of the labor-initiated and -organized Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride of Sept. 20 – Oct 3, 2003.


 As part of a strategy to build mulitsectoral support for undocumented immigrants, the AFL-CIO and other labor unions, notably Unite HERE and SEIU, organized a national caravan of immigrants and sympathizers to highlight the plight of immigrant workers.


Freedom Ride organizers sought to liken the struggle of immigrant workers for fair treatment on the job to the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s and, in particular, to the Freedom Rides campaign launched by students in 1961. The goal was to mobilize students, church activists, and progressives, just as the struggles of Blacks in the South sparked a nationwide civil rights movement.


Underlying the new immigrant-rights movement was a conviction that mass mobilization and a rights-based messaging about immigration would propel comprehensive immigration reform forward. Organizations that were central to CCIR were principals – including National Immigration Forum and National Council of La Raza -- in the associated Immigrant Workers Freedom Coalition. In its proclamation about the Immigrant Workers Freedom Campaign, the AFL-CIO embraced an immigrant-rights position on CIR:

“The AFL-CIO believes that such legislative reform must include, at a minimum: (1) legalization, including the right of immigrant workers in the United States to live and work in this country and become its citizens; and (2) the right of immigrant workers to unite their families in the United States if they wish.”

CCIR put its newly acquired financial and organizational might behind the Freedom Ride strategy of immigrant mobilization. In 2004 it sponsored the New American Freedom Summer, which was made possible by grants from the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund.


The New American Freedom Summer, which brought immigrant-rights speakers to summer organizing sessions with students and others, was self-described as a program of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the New American Opportunity Fund, a project of the Tides Center in San Francisco.


 According to CCIR, the Freedom Summer project drew inspiration from the student activism of the 1960s around civil rights issues in the South. It modeled its summer organizing and education campaign on the states of Arizona and Florida, saying that it was standing “with immigrant communities in their struggle to live in safety, secure the right to vote, and to win equal treatment and full citizenship. Once again, a group of committed Americans, many of them young people, answered the call and participated in this generation’s battle for the soul of America.”


 Its primary goals were “to build on the unprecedented success of last year’s Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride and take another step forward in forging a movement strong enough to win a safe, legal, orderly, and fair fix to our nation’s broken immigration laws,” and “to build the next generation of immigrant-rights leaders.” The Freedom Rides mobilization of 2003 and follow-up educational and organizing effort by CCIR in the summer of 2004 did energize immigrant-rights organizers and their supporters, but this left-of-center activism also drew the fire of the restrictionists.

Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, pointed to the backlash potential of this immigrant-rights organizing in 2003 in his “Freeloaders” commentary in National Review online – an assessment that echoed over the next few years in the wake of immigrant-rights organizing that brought millions of immigrants to the streets across America to denounce the incipient anti-immigrant crackdown and to demand legalization. Krikorian wrote:

"If you wanted a way of persuading Republican congressmen to support something, the last thing you'd do is have the AFL-CIO organize a bus convoy of illegal aliens appropriating the rhetoric of the civil-rights movement, endorsed by the Communist party. “And yet, this is just what the open-border crowd has done. Busloads of ‘Freedom Riders’ converged on Capitol Hill Thursday and are now headed for New York. The group will meet at Liberty State Park in Jersey City today and go to Queens on Saturday to press its list of demands, including amnesty for illegal aliens, higher levels of legal immigration, and an end to the distinction between citizens and non-citizens.”

From its beginning, CCIR had integral ties with the liberal Center for American Progress policy institute in Washington, DC founded and directed by John Podesta. A key CAP figure in CCIR and in the DC immigrant-rights organizations like National Immigration Forum was Maria Echaveste, a senior CAP fellow and founder of the Nueva Vista Group.

Echaveste’s office at Nueva Vista was given as the primary contact for CCIR by Atlantic Philanthropies and CCIR itself. Nueva Vista was paid by CCIR to provide lobbying and consulting services. At a forum sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation on the future of Hispanics, Echaveste told the forum: “Citizenship is in their interest for a stake in society.” Given the impressive numbers taking part in recent mass mobilization, she said she was hopeful that “the stage has been set for comprehensive reform.”

Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: Immigrant Rights Organizing 2003-2004

Immigrant Rights Movement Gets Organized

(Fifth in a Border Lines' Series on the Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)

The country needs an immigrant-rights movement – a movement that fights back against the many abuses suffered my immigrants on the job and as part of the immigrant crackdown. Time and again, immigrants have organized themselves to demand fair treatment and to better themselves. Immigrants have unionized, organized community development associations, marched and demonstrated to secure their rights as workers and members of U.S. society. In their struggles, immigrants haven’t been alone. 


Immigrant aid societies, legal associations like the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, churches, and labor unions have long provided critical support and credibility for immigrants, legal and illegal. Throughout U.S. history, the country has benefited from immigrant-rights movements. But what Carnegie Corporation calls the “immigration reform movement” led by immigrants is a more recent phenomenon. 


The foundation in the cover article in its Carnegie Reporter, “Immigration – The Reform Movement Rebuilds,” situates the groups and individuals that led the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) at the center of this immigration reform movement. The concept is that immigration policy reform should be driven by an immigrant-rights agenda and by immigrant-rights groups. It is a concept that has been generously embraced by liberal foundations like the Carnegie Corporation. 


What’s so striking is that this strategy – having immigrant-rights groups spearhead immigration policy reform -- remains unquestioned by immigrant-rights groups and the foundations that fund them, despite its repeated failures. 


 In keeping with their commitment to protect and empower the disadvantaged sectors, liberal foundations have since the early 1980s nurtured immigrant-rights and ethnic groups as their voice in the immigration debate. As a result, there is a national network of immigrant-rights and ethnic organizations that work on behalf of the immigrant population. 


Early in the Bush administration these immigrant-rights and ethnic groups, principally National Council of La Raza, began discussions among themselves and with the foundations about using their networks to advance the cause of comprehensive immigration reform. 

An Atlantic Philanthropies planning grant in 2003 brought together a dozen immigrant advocacy organization – “from labor, community development, ethnic identified groups, national immigration advocacy, and regional immigration coalitions” – to establish the coalition and set a common strategy. 


The result was the creation in 2004 of CCIR, which as a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt entity could engage in legislative advocacy and lobbying. Atlantic Philanthropies also granted money to establish a related 501(c)(3) public-education organization called the New American Opportunity Campaign to work on “leadership development, advocacy, organizing, and base-building efforts at the national, regional, and local levels.”

Describing the initiative to other foundations in 2005, Atlantic’s Reconciliation & Human Rights Program director Rebecca Rittgers said, “To galvanize the movement, and further the human rights of all immigrants in this country, we also need to further grassroots mobilization, judicial advocacy, research and dissemination, and the key to everything is communications. And communications tools and capacity building are great vehicles for funders to work together.” 


 “What’s important to us,” said Rittgers, “is we’re trying to give a voice to those who have never had a voice. There’s no better group that fits that criterion than the undocumented people in this country.” The goal of this funding was to get CIR passed. 


As Rittgers stressed, immigration reform “needs to be comprehensive and address the issues of family reunification, enforcement, and future guest worker policy.” With its headquarters in Washington, CCIR set out to build a grassroots movement to support CIR and to mount a lobbying campaign in Congress. 


The Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) was self-described as “a new collaborative developed by national and local community, immigrant, labor and policy leaders in 2004. Based in Washington, DC, the mission and central purpose of the CCIR is to pass progressive comprehensive immigration reform.” 


  CCIR had a six-person board: Deepak Bhargava, Center for Community Change; Cecilia Muñoz, National Council of La Raza; Frank Sharry, National Immigration Forum; Chung-Wha Hong, New York Immigration Coalition; and Eliseo Medina, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Tom Snyder, UNITE HERE. 


 From its beginning, CCIR was beset with tensions. As the Carnegie Reporter article recalled: “Initial meetings of what became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform meetings brought together 150 groups to discuss strategy, and some devolved into tense sessions of finger pointing and accusations of bad faith, turf and resource hoarding and general positioning for power. 


On the other hand, meetings of small groups of people brought accusations from colleagues that these relatively few leaders, many of whom were based in Washington, D.C., were not being held accountable for their decisions by members of the coalition. 


 “In a quest to improve the situation, a decision was made in late 2006 to form a 43-member strategy council with a mandate to coordinate on fast-breaking developments and hold informational conference calls to keep others around the country in the loop. 


This helped develop a sense of transparency and trust. In addition, the Coalition organized regular conference calls involving 100 to 200 people.” With the collapse of CIR in the Senate in mid-2007, CCIR also shut down. 


As the Carnegie Report notes, “Despite all this intense effort the coalition was unable to develop a broad and strong enough movement to prevail.” 


  Next: Immigrant-Rights Movement in Action 2003-2007

The Rise of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform -- Foundation Funding

(Fourth in a Border Lines' Series on the Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)

The Carnegie Corporation’s report, “Immigration: The Reform Movement Rebuilds,” rightly places today’s immigrant-rights movement in the context of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR). 


The coalition was the foundation-backed movement to advance comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) in the Bush’s second term. The structure, strategy, and messaging of the post-CIR immigrant-rights movement are a direct outgrowth of the now-extinct CCIR. 


In close consultation with their grantees – including National Immigration Forum, Immigration Policy Center (part of American Immigration Law Foundation), National Council of La Raza, and Center for Community Change, among others – most of the major liberal foundations early in the first Bush administration joined together to establish and maintain an expanded immigrant-rights movement led largely by Washington, DC. organizations. 


 The primary goal was to create the grassroots support and policy advocacy capacity needed to pass CIR, and the strategy adopted to advance this goal was to empower a national network of immigrant, community, and labor organizations united by their immigrant-rights messaging. 


While the leading coalition players were funded separately by Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and other liberal foundations (organized into a consortium called the Four Freedoms Fund), Atlantic Philanthropies was the principal foundation behind CCIR. The story of the immigration reform movement can’t be understood apart from foundation funding. 


The CCIR was a product less of a burgeoning immigrant rights organizing than of a decision by Atlantic Philanthropies in 2003 to focus on immigration reform as one of its leading priorities. Although established in 1982, it wasn’t until 1997 that the foundation started making public grants in its name.


One of the world’s largest foundations, Atlantic Philanthropies, established by businessman Charles Feeney (who made a fortune building an empire of airport duty-free shops), decided in mid-2003 to spend down its multi-billion dollar endowment over the next 12-15 years. 


Immigration reform was one of priority funding areas of the foundation’s Reconciliation and Human Rights Program; and starting in late 2003 the foundation began working closely with immigrant-rights organizations to launch a coalition movement that would serve as the public spearhead for comprehensive immigration reform. 


 The foundation was determined “to ensure that something would be left when we were no longer here.” 


According to Rebecaa Rittgers, executive director of the foundation's Reconciliation and Human Rights Program, 


“The decision was made with the caveat that we would spend it out in a way that would leave a tangible impact on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society.” Under its human rights program, immigration reform was selected as one of the three funding priorities.” 


 The foundation’s desire to serve the most vulnerable and disadvantaged found a perfect match in immigrant-rights organizations, which could credibly claim that they represented the interests of then 12-plus illegal immigrants. 


It was a perfect match, and the foundation initiated a strategy process that birthed CCIR in 2004. The foundation tells the CCIR story this way:

“Atlantic has made three grants to date in support of this effort: a planning grant in the amount of $100,000, and two core support grants, one in 2004 which was renewed in 2005, totaling $7million.The initial planning grant enabled these twelve advocate groups – from labor, community development, ethnic identified groups, national immigration advocacy, and regional immigration coalitions – to come together at a common table and set a coordinated agenda and strategy. The two core support grants enacted this strategy – through advocacy, lobbying, communications, message and media development, grassroots mobilization and education efforts. To widen the reach and coordination of this ‘inside/outside’ strategy, a sister 501(c)(3) coalition, the New American Opportunity Campaign, was created by the CCIR.”

CCIR was established as a 501(c) (4) nonprofit organization -- allowing it to lobby extensively for congressional bills. The New American Opportunity Campaign, which effectively became CCIR, was established as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that has more restrictive lobbying regulations. The creation of the New American Opportunity Campaign opened up new funding opportunities for CCIR since many donors prefer granting to 501(c) (3) organizations. 


 According to Atlantic Philanthropies, CCIR was a “a joint legislative advocacy and grassroots mobilization initiative begun in 2003 with the mission to enact rights-centered comprehensive immigration reform legislation in the United States. 


This coalition effort is guided by a core set of rights-based immigration principles and priorities.” Briefing other funders in 2005, Atlantic's Rittgers explained her program's strategy with regard to the role of immigrant-rights in immigration reform:

"What we’re trying is to take it to the next level, to play upon the investments that have been made to date, to bring all the key players together. To us, this mechanism of a coalition is the best bet."

Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: Immigrant Rights Movement Gets Organized

Dueling Immigration Strategies

(Third in a Border Lines' Series on Movement for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.)

For the past three decades, pro- and anti-immigration institutes in Washington, DC have battled for their policy positions. Although it was the restrictionists that first set up camp in Washington – with the establishment of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979 – the pro-immigration forces generally had more success in gaining a hearing in Congress and in the media. 


Today, it’s the restrictionists who clearly dominate the policy debate, while the pro-immigration groups struggle to have their voices heard over the restrictionist din about border security, respect for the law, and the broken immigration system. 


It has been a variation of a left-right confrontation from the beginning – with the conservative foundations like Scaife and Smith Richardson historically funding the restrictionists and the liberal foundations like Carnegie and Ford funding the pro-immigration groups like National Immigration Forum. 


As the restrictionist institutes – FAIR, NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies – have expanded their influence, they broadened their funding base, drawing in wealthy private donors and hundreds of thousands of members. 


Meanwhile, the pro-immigration institutes continue to rely almost exclusively on a small set of liberal foundations. There are dueling ideologies at play. On the restrictionist side, the institutes are guided by a zero-population growth ethic, while on the pro-immigration side the ideological drivers of the leading NGOs are respect for human rights, internationalism, and humanitarianism. 


The pro-immigration organizations went into 21st century buoyed by a burst of immigrant organizing and a confidence buoyed by the rapid increase in the immigrant and Latino population in America.


Immigrants organized Hometown Clubs that helped new immigrants from the same towns in Mexico, banks started offering mortgages and other loans to illegal immigrants, day labor centers were established, and liberal foundations and academics popularized the notion of “transborder communities” that spanned national borders in this age of globalization. 


There arose a new sense of entitlement among the growing numbers of illegal immigrants that to a large decree merged with a deepening realization of the power – voting, economic, cultural, political – of Latinos. 


In recognition of the growing numbers of undocumented immigrants and in response to immigrant demands, many local governments and economic institutions adopted new practices that facilitated illegal-immigrant integration into U.S. life. While the anti-immigration institutes were established with the clear goal of dramatically reducing immigration levels, their counterparts are less about making a case for immigration than they are about representing the interests of immigrants.

This has been their central strength and central failing as advocates for immigration policy reform – a strength the immigrant-rights message creates a base among immigrants and immigrant advocates throughout the country, and a failing because the immigrant-centered framing of immigration reform identifies these immigration reform advocates as a special interest lobby rather than as a more widely based citizens’ pro-immigration movement. 


The “immigrant rights” identification is one that the leading pro-immigration organizations pin on themselves. The National Immigration Forum, for example, describes itself in these terms:

"Established in 1982, the National Immigration Forum is the nation’s premier immigrant rights organization. The Forum is dedicated to embracing and upholding America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants. The Forum advocates and builds public support for public policies that welcome immigrants and refugees and are fair to and supportive of newcomers to our country."

In the aftermath of the mid-2007 defeat of CIR, the pro-immigration groups, aided by their foundation sponsors, began readying themselves for next congressional discussion of a CIR proposal. 


“Immigration: The Reform Movement Rebuilds,” the cover article in the Fall 2008 issue of the Carnegie Reporter, examines the reconstruction of the liberal immigration reform movement in the aftermath of the failure of the last CIR campaign. 


The Carnegie article rightly notes that the “seeds of the pro-immigration movement are in the tradition of coalition relationships that began when the immigration reform debate started in the early 1980s.” From the beginning, the pro-immigration groups that formed to promote legalization of undocumented immigrants and refugees came to the immigration debate with an immigrant rights message. 


Many of the main figures in the movement were closely associated with the Central American and Caribbean (mainly Haiti) solidarity and sanctuary movements. 


As such, their primary focus was to protect the rights of immigrants fleeing wars and political persecution. To further these goals, alliances were established with business, labor, ethnic, attorney, and church organizations that each for their own reasons supported liberal immigration policies. The immigrant-rights movement surged early in the Bush administration –in response both to the deepening anti-immigration sentiment in the country (especially after Sept. 11) and to a major influx of foundation funding for immigrant-rights organizing. 


The surge in immigrant organizing was also in response to a surge of illegal immigrants who crossed the southern border to work in the booming constructions and service industries.

Finding themselves exploited and abused, immigrants organized themselves to demand decent wages and working conditions. Labor unions, notably the SEIU and Unite Here, not only made new commitments to organize immigrants but also likened their struggles to the civil rights battles of the 1960s -- organizing in 2003 the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride across the nation.

The Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) coordinated the NGO drive to pass CIR. Established in 2003 and closed down in the aftermath of CIR’s defeat, CCIR was an immigrant rights initiative launched and sustained with financial support of Atlantic Philanthropies.

Three successive grants from Atlantic Philanthropies for a total of $10 million underwrote what Atlantic called a “joint legislative advocacy and grassroots mobilization initiative with the mission to enact rights-centered comprehensive immigration reform legislation in the U.S. 


This coalition effort is guided by a core set of rights-based immigration principles and priorities, including: a path to permanency for the undocumented, family re-unification and labor protection for future flows.”

Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: The Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform – Foundation Funding

The Failure of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

(Second in a Border Lines' series on the Movement for Comprhensive Immigration Reform.)

The NGO campaign to pass comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) in the second George W. Bush administration failed miserably. Even with a Democratic majority in both Houses and with the stated support of the president, CIR proponents repeatedly failed to advance liberal immigration reform in 2005-2007. 


In contrast, those advancing a restrictionist reform agenda experienced numerous victories in Congress in the form of increased budget allocations for immigration enforcement and authorizations for new border security, employee verification, and immigrant detention measures. 


A massive response by the restrictionist forces in May-June 2007 far surpassed the grassroots organizing and advocacy efforts of the pro-immigration groups, and CIR supporters in the U.S. Senate failed to move the CIR bill forward to a vote. Numerous factors contributed to the failure of CIR. (For a discussion of CIR, see Contradictions of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.) 


While President Bush supported CIR, he made little effort to corral Republican support, while at the same time he increasingly unleashed the Department of Homeland Security to pursue its immigrant crackdown campaign. 


A larger problem, though, was the diminishing bipartisan support for liberal immigration policies. An immigration backlash movement started building in the mid-1990s, and after Sept. 11 the restrictionist movement accumulated new supporters with the merging of national security, border security, and homeland security policies. 


The expanding constituency of grassroots restrictionists persuaded the Republican Party to abandon its traditional pro-business position with respect to immigration and to embrace restrictionism. Awareness of the growth of restrictionist sentiment also moved the Democratic Party from the left to the center on immigration policy, and many moderate and conservative Democrats increasingly espoused positions promoted by the restrictionist policy institutes in Washington. 


 Both parties have in the past several years found common ground in supporting tougher border control and in targeting immigrants as lawbreakers. And both parties are split between business supporters of guestworker and temporary workers programs and opponents (from immigration restrictionists to worker advocates) of these programs that primarily serve business demands for skilled and unskilled foreign labor. 


Included in the CIR proposals, the guestworker provisions roiled the ranks of the Democratic Party. The common wisdom has been that any CIR bill needs to satisfy business demands for temporary workers if it is to count on business support. 


But business support for CIR has been more rhetorical that real – not pulling its share in terms of educational, advocacy, and lobbying work. 


The failure of business to pull its weight at part of the traditional coalition – business, labor, immigrant rights groups, churches (mainline Protestant and Catholic), and immigration lawyers -- that supports liberal immigration policy has given more weight to those in the coalition that oppose or are highly critical of guestworker programs. 


As a result, some coalition members demanded new labor regulations for guestworker programs, angering business supporters, while the inclusion of guestworker programs caused some former labor backers of CIR to drop their support. 


Another factor in eroding the support for CIR was the addition of punitive conditions for those immigrants hoping to legalize their presence. High fees and touch-back provisions caused some in the immigrant-rights forces to abandon their support. 


But it is commonly accepted that the rapid growth of restrictionist forces that was the major factor in stopping CIR during the Bush administration. 

  Next in Border Lines' CIR Series: Dueling Strategies