Immigration reform supporters gathered outside the office of Congressman John Dingell (D-MI), located on 301 West Michigan Ave. in downtown Ypsilanti, on Thursday, May 2, to show their support for Dingell’s recent stance regarding immigration law reformation.
Vinoliah Mtshiya is originally from Zimbabwe but has been battling the immigration system in court since 2003. She is not allowed to travel outside of the country due to her current immigrant status, which makes it difficult to keep in touch her family in Africa.
“I’m still trying to legalize myself,” she said. “If my family dropped dead, I couldn’t legally go see them.”
Mtshiya was outside the office in an attempt to gain support for reforming immigration laws. She has six grandchildren but she has only seen their pictures because she can’t travel to her home country.
“I’m still a mother; how can you go without seeing your children and not lose it?” she said. “I really wish someone would put themselves in my shoes and know what I’m going through.”
Mahaman Djibril is the president of the Nigerien Association of Michigan; he said there are many African immigrants within Washtenaw County who need knowledge and assistance to become legal citizens.
“There’s a lot of Africans out there who need to know what is going on with what Obama is doing,” he said.
Djibril said many immigrants are wary to seek assistance when trying to become legal citizens, and he attended the rally to give information to African immigrants who need help.
“They don’t want to go to lawyers because they cost too much,” he said. “A lot of them are scared to go to meetings about it because they are worried about immigration officers and agents.”
Brooke Fajardo is a Washtenaw County representative for Organizing For Action, a group that supports immigration reform and is also a support group for President Barack Obama. She attended the rally to show support for Dingell, who she said is “a strong proponent for immigration reform legislation.”
Fajardo’s husband is an immigrant from France who became a U.S. citizen. She said the access to legal assistance was very important to gaining his citizenship.
“There is a patchwork of laws and rules that make it a very complicated and frustrating process,” she said. “It was scary to possibly have my husband deported and taken away from me.”
She said the rally outside of the office was a follow up to a previous meeting in the week that had over 70 participants. There were roughly a dozen supporters outside of the congressman’s office on Thursday.
NBC News said a study in 2011 found the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. was around 11.5 million.
Many arguments from both sides are brought up as a result of this debate.
Florida Republican Senator Marc Rubio recently had an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal about the topic.
He wrote, “To deal with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 recognizes the reality that they are not going home. It offers them an opportunity for legalization and, potentially, permanent residence and citizenship—provided they pay fines, pass background checks, don’t receive federal benefits and wait in line behind everybody who followed the rules, among other requirements.”
Dingell tweeted earlier this year, “Comprehensive immigration reform is common sense and long overdue.”
Greg Sargent’s blog from the Washington Post said, “Many GOP base voters are persuaded that immigration reform will create a whole lot of Democratic voters — in purely political terms, rank-and-file members of the GOP base believe immigration reform is a net win for Democrats no matter how you slice it.”
Some EMU students sympathized with the local immigrants.
Myriah Schwartz is an Eastern Michigan University junior working on a major in Japanese, along with a minor in math. She plans to study abroad during the Fall semester in Hirakata, Osaka, Japan.
Schwartz said if she met her husband while travelling internationally they should be able to live in this country easily if they wanted.
“I’d want him to be able to come back with me if that’s what he wanted too,” Schwartz said.
She did not attend the rally but said she supported new reform legislation because she has met a lot of friends at EMU are international students.
“We have students from all over the world at Eastern, and they bring so many different experiences and views,” Schwartz said. I support immigration reform.”
