In worksites, schools and communities across the Commonwealth, it’s easy to see the remarkable diversity and energy that Virginia’s immigrants contribute to our economy. In addition to the highly-educated, highly-compensated immigrants who distinguish themselves in a variety of sectors, Virginia also benefits from the hard labor of a huge workforce of both documented and undocumented immigrants working for low pay.

“From the mountains of Southwest Virginia where crews of workers harvest Christmas trees in the freezing cold for low wages, to the booming construction sites in the Northern Virginia suburbs, to the brutally hot tomato fields of the Eastern Shore, low-wage immigrant workers are performing many of the toughest, lowest-paid, and most dangerous jobs in the state,” said Tim Freilich, legal director of the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers. “ Virginia benefits mightily from their contributions, while we enjoy some of the lowest unemployment rates Virginia has seen in years.”

This past spring, millions of our immigrant brothers, sisters, co-workers, friends and neighbors took to the streets and marched for justice. At issue was a piece of federal legislation that would have turned millions of hardworking immigrants into felons. Their protest message was simple: ‘We are not criminals. We are here to work and support our families.’

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Washington, D.C. In Richmond, an estimated 4,500 immigrants and their supporters held an amazing rally demanding basic justice. In Charlottesville, 350 hardworking immigrant community members demonstrated peacefully downtown. And in Northern Virginia, school-age children of immigrants did their parents proud by organizing their own dramatic protests demanding an immigration system that makes sense.

“All sides of the immigration debate are tired of Congress’ failure to fix our nation’s broken immigration system. But unfortunately, some of our state delegates and senators in Richmond have decided to try to fix it themselves,” said Freilich. “Their misguided strategy is to make life more difficult for Virginia’s hardworking immigrant families, but when the General Assembly hurts Virginia’s immigrants, the General Assembly hurts Virginia.”

According to the 2005 American Community Survey (http://factfinder.census.gov), almost one in 10 Virginians were born outside of the United States. While in past years, immigrants were concentrated in a few communities, now they are living and working in every section of the Commonwealth.

“VOP members know all about injustice. VOP members know about the struggle for dignity and fair treatment. VOP members know about family and hard work and overcoming obstacles,” said VOP member Brenda Lambert. “And most importantly, VOP members know that the strength and power of our individual voices are multiplied many times over when we come together and work for change.”

This session, the Virginia Justice Center will be working with VOP and our other community partners to ensure that the General Assembly recognizes the contributions of Virginia’s immigrants. Immigrant-bashing to score political points will not go unchallenged. The Virginia Justice Center asks you to be ready to oppose anti-immigrant proposals like these that will probably come up this year:

• Bills that would stop local governments from using local funding to offer services to many immigrant residents of their communities;
• Bills that would prevent many of Virginia’s immigrant children from going on to college either through bans on college admission or access to in-state tuition;
• Bills that would undermine community policing efforts and increase racial profiling by calling for local and state police to try to enforce immigration law, instead of leaving immigration enforcement to trained federal agents; and,
• Bills that would mean more frustrated people at DMV desperately searching for the right combination of documents and lead to even more unlicensed drivers on Virginia’s roads.

“These bills aren’t just bad for Virginia’s immigrants. They’re bad for Virginia,” Freilich said.

To learn more about these bills, please contact Tim Freilich at tim@justice4all.org or (434) 977-0553 x111.