Estimados miembros de NALACC,

Aqui les va la version final de la carta arriba mencionada. En adicion a NALACC como
organización nacional, y sus miembros; las siguientes organizaciones estarán co-
firmando también:

WCVI
SVREP
Hispanic Federation
MAPA

Gracias por su apoyo:

"Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such
a policy we can turn to the world and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear
conscience."

President John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants

June 22, 2009

President Barack Obama

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Honorable President Obama,

We, the undersigned organizations, representing thousands of immigrant families, write

to commend you for meeting with Congressional leaders to discuss prospects for
immigration policy reform. We urge you to tackle this issue swiftly and substantively.

We understand how difficult it is to undertake the task of reforming our deeply broken,
inhumane and wasteful immigration policy of today. However, we believe that it is critical
that a responsible solution be enacted both promptly and thoughtfully. In this regard, we
urge you to make sure that the following be included in an immigration reform
agenda:

1. A mandate to fully process all legal permanent residency and naturalization

applications within six months from date of filing.
2. The creation of a federal immigrant integration policy dedicated to support local
and state governments in managing the challenges of changing demographics as a
result of migration.

3. The creation of a totally new adjustment of status program designed to allow all
undocumented immigrants already residing in the U.S. to apply for legal permanent
residency status in an expeditious and fair manner.

In the very immediate term, we encourage you to continue to take administrative actions
that will provide relief to immigrant communities as well as peace of mind to employers
who depend on immigrant workers. Specifically, we urge you once again to use your
executive authority to do the following:

1. Suspend all work-place and residential raids which are solely motivated by the
mere suspicion of a lack of immigration status.

2. Stop the sending of so called "Social Security No Match Letters," which have been
used by employers to unfairly subjugate immigrant workers and dissuade them from
asserting workplace rights.

3. Terminate all existing cooperative agreements on immigration policy enforcement

between ICE and local law enforcement agencies.

While we believe that thorough and profound changes in immigration reform are urgently
needed, we also encourage you to actively support the passage of limited scope
legislative reform initiatives intended to fix specific areas of our current immigration
policy framework that contribute to ensuring the stability, integrity and unity of families.
In our opinion, advancement on pieces of limited-scope legislation does not contradict
advancement towards truly new immigration policy architecture.

We are leaders of Latino and immigrant-led community based organizations that are
dedicated to serving and advocating for immigrant communities and committed to
restoring due process and civil rights for everyone in our society. The role of immigrants
and immigration policy continue to be very contentious topics in our country, largely due
to the fact that these issues have been taken hostage by political forces propelled by
racism and xenophobia who blame immigrants for all of the social and economic ills that
millions of U.S. households have been experiencing over the past few decades.

We recognize that the source of most Americans' dwindling quality of life is not
immigration but the dismantling of the social contract between government and its
citizens and the implementation of an economic model that has concentrated wealth into
fewer hands. Given this context, we believe you have a decisive role to play in order to
move us all towards a new national framework inspired by rationality, humanity, and
justice. In our opinion, these are values that have been missing so far from our national
policy and legislative deliberation about immigrants and immigration policy reform.
In times when we are tempted to turn against immigrant communities, as we have been
doing since at least the early 1990's, we have to remind ourselves of the basic promises
of our nation. The forever relevant words in our declaration of independence, "We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," must be kept in mind now more than ever.
Unfortunately, given the way we have treated immigrant communities in recent years, it
is clear that many of our so called leaders have forgotten about the foundational values
of our nation.

The lack of political will to reform our broken immigration policy in a way that is in sync
with our tradition as a nation of immigrants, as well as with the interconnected world in
which we now live, has led to a countless number of abuses against immigrants,
particularly against Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. The sooner we can
count on a new, truly inclusive, humane, visionary and functional U.S. immigration law;
the sooner we will begin to correct the conditions that fuel anti-immigrant sentiments
throughout the country.

Finally, we would like you to keep in mind that while conventional wisdom considers
immigration as a domestic policy issue, it is an area of public policy deeply affected by
events outside our borders. In the case of Mexico, Central American and Caribbean
countries, and the rest of Latin America, the profound social and economic asymmetries
that exist between them and the United States of America, continue to be leading factors
that push millions of people towards emigration. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind
the urgent need to combine public policy responses in the area of immigration with brand
new policy initiatives in the area of international trade and economic development. By
simultaneously moving forward in these two fronts, we will eventually bring about a
humane equilibrium between domestic immigration policy and international migration.

We thank you again for taking leadership to reform immigration policy and for taking into
consideration the views of the Latino immigrant community. We look forward to working
with you to move ahead with just, humane and realistic immigration reform as soon as
possible.

Sincerely,

National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC)