New York, NY –
While lawmakers in Washington focus on healthcare reform, advocates in the New York area this week are fighting to keep immigration on the national agenda. WNYC's Marianne McCune reports.
Immigrants in New York and New Jersey have been holding press conferences, town hall meetings, protests and vigils - clamoring for a place on President Obama's to-do list.
They're frustrated because, so far, the Obama administration has changed little about the Bush policies that irked them most - continued arrests, detention, and deportation of immigrants whose children are citizens; the use of local police and prison officials to help enforce immigration laws; the requirement that federal contractors prove their employees have legal working papers via a system critics say sometimes gets legal workers fired.
Under Obama, the Department of Homeland Security has made some policy changes that are favorable to the more than 10 million immigrants who are in the country illegally. But comprehensive reform has not made it back onto the domestic agenda of the President or Congress.
Marianne McCune is a staff reporter for New York Public Radio (WNYC 93.9FM/AM820) and contributes regularly to National Public Radio and Public Radio International. She thinks of the New York Metropolitan Area as the center of the world because that's how she covers it: more than a third of New York residents were born in another country and Marianne reports on the resulting cultural, economic, and political links between New York/New Jersey and almost everywhere else on earth.
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