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Immigrant Rights

On March 14th, more than 200 people participated in JCA’s annual Immigrant Rights Freedom Seder, recounting the Passover story, and sharing stories of oppression, immigration, and freedom from many communities.

Out of their stories, came this Wordle - a visual representation of the words that describe people’s immigration histories.
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This new YouTube video by the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs tells two compelling immigrant stories.

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JCA: We Stand for Immigrant Rights

Jump to:

JCA Immigrant Rights Campaign History

Immigrant Rights Leadership Team

Get Involved: How You Can Support Immigrant Rights

JCA Stands for Fair and Humane Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Immigrant Rights Online Information

JCA Immigrant Rights Campaign History

JCA has been organizing for Immigrant Rights since 2001. This work has entailed specific campaigns as well as work to organize, educate and mobilize the Jewish community alongside immigrant communities.
• 2003-2004: JCA works with a broad coalition of faith, labor, immigrant and civil rights organizations to pass separation ordinances in Minneapolis and St. Paul to guarantee that local police do not act as enforcers of federal immigration law.
• 2006: JCA works with the Alliance for Fair Immigration Reform Minnesota (AFFIRM) and other allies to help build a movement for comprehensive immigration reform and to defeat anti-immigrant legislation at the state level.
• 2007: JCA works to put forth the Immigrant Rights State Legislative Package.
• 2008: JCA works with the town of Postville in dealing with the aftermath of the largest immigration raid in U.S. history at the time. JCA and members send tens of thousands of dollars in relief aid to the affected families. JCA organizes a march in Postville, with partners Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (Chicago) and St. Bridget’s Catholic Church (Postville), that draws 1,500 to demand an end to immigration raids and in support of worker and immigrant rights.
• 2009: JCA works with over 20 national Jewish organizations on Progress by Pesach: The Jewish Campaign to Stop the Raids and Call for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and on We Were Strangers Too, the follow-up to Progress by Pesach.

Jewish Community Action is now helping to launch a new campaign effort, Minnesota Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. It consists of at least 30 immigrant-rights, faith-based, civil and legal rights groups, and other community organizations committed to humane, federal comprehensive immigration reform. This coalition is working closely with the national Reform Immigration for America campaign.
 

JCA's Immigrant Rights Leadership Team

Our immigration work is led by the Immigrant Rights Leadership Team. The IRLT works to build leadership within the Jewish community and to work with allies in support of immigrant rights and comprehensive immigration reform.
 

JCA Stands for Fair and Humane Comprehensive Immigration Reform
As American Jews, we represent an immigrant people living within a nation that is rich with diversity of history and experience. Since the beginning of our history, Jews have known the experience of being immigrants and wanderers. Indeed, the first commandment given to Abraham is "leave your land, your people and your parental home." As slaves in the land of Egypt, we experienced the worst of what foreignness can entail. Accordingly, our legal and ethical teachings demand that our own experience of being strangers in other lands compel us to care for the newcomers within our own communities. The Torah alone presents dozens of commandments governing the treatment of strangers, including the prohibition against oppressing the other, and the mandate to make "one law for both the citizen and stranger among you" (Exodus 22:20, 24:22).

We in the Jewish community know that people do not flee their homes without reason. They leave to escape oppression, violence, poverty, and desperation. They emigrate in the belief that new surroundings offer better opportunities and a better life. Many have sought such opportunity in the U.S. and have become our neighbors. They are individuals striving for the very same things that we seek to give our families, and they come with the same hopes as our own grandparents. We cannot look at the immigration question without seeing the faces of our friends and forebears. Much like the first Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States 350 years ago, today’s immigrants seek freedom and the opportunity to build new lives, to make contributions and to become full participants in American society.

As Jews, our history and religion teach us that we must speak up when see injustice. This is why Jewish Community Action joins a century-long legacy of American Jews supporting immigrant rights. Because our current immigration system is out of line with Jewish values of dignity and human rights for all, JCA joins AFFIRM, a Minnesota coalition of organizations working to pass fair and humane comprehensive immigration reform.
Alliance for Fair Federal Immigration Reform of Minnesota (AFFIRM)

Key Principles for Immigration Reform:

• family reunification;

• a path to U.S. citizenship for immigrants and their families now living and working in the United States;

• a fair and just immigration process for future immigrants and refugees;

• restoring due process and human rights protections;

• supporting worker rights.

Additional Jewish resources:

The Jewish Immigration Toolkit
Labor on the Bimah 2006: Immigration and Immigrant Rights
Socialaction.com’s Immigrants and Refugees page
A Jewish Vision for the Future of American Immigration & Refugee Policy – the Hebrew Aid Immigration Society (HIAS)
An Abbreviated Timeline of Jewish Immigration to the United States – from Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ)

Local Organizations
Alliance for Fair Federal Immigration Reform of Minnesota (AFFIRM)
Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights - Energy of a Nation: Immigration Resources
Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAC)
Centro Campesino

National Organizations
Coalition For Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Detention Watch Network
Reform Immigration for America
Fair Immigration Reform Movement
Immigrant Solidarity Network
Liberty and Justice for All
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

HEADLINES FROM JCA

Sukkot Guide:
We Were Strangers Too
 

Progress by Pesach

Unjust Laws Must Be Resisted

Vic Rosenthal, executive director of JCA and Julie Plaut, JCA  Board member, had their commentary published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, calling on the community to resist unjust immigration laws.

Read the commentary