A coalition of approximately 200 groups has just thrown the vast operation for “A Migratory Reform for the United States”.

This month two years are fulfilled since the debate on the migratory reform was falling down abruptamente in the Congress. Democrats and Republicans could not come to an agreement on the multiple amendments proposed to the Project of Law of Wide Migratory Reform of 2007. The conservatives were considering her to be too lax, the liberals saw her very hard.

Now a new and renewed effort arises to achieve the approval of a migratory reform in the Congress and his defenders are sure that this time will not fail. The question is: why now and why not earlier? What has changed in two years?
In fact there are several factors. The most obvious it is that there is a new president. Barack Obama has brought a new hope for the migratory reform. The prometió to press for his first year of government a law that includes both the frontier safety and a way towards the legalization of undocumented immigrants. Nevertheless, that will not be only sufficient.

Let's not forget that the ex-President George W. Bush was also partial to a migratory reform. He lobbied actively in the Congress to obtain the approval but it did not manage to influence the members of its own party. In fact, in an interview shortly before finishing his order he said that two things about that more he was sorry were non-having found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and non-having obtained the approval of a migratory reform. Unfortunately, when Bush was pressing the reform it had already spent all his political capital. Obama, meanwhile, scarcely begins.

With the Democratic ones as principal defenders of the migratory reform it must be easier to achieve the approval both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, now that his majority in the Congress is even more wide. But they will have to show flexibility. Many Democrats voted against the migratory reform two years behind, later that the project was diluting due to a series of amendments.

To achieve the approval of the reform in the Congress it is necessary to have the support of at least some Republicans, and this time there might be major political incentives. From 2007 several legislators with a clear antiimmigrant agenda lost his struggle for the reelection because of his extreme positions and high rhetoric. An example: the king of the attacks against the immigrants, the ex-conferee of Colorado, Tom Tancredo. The Republicans have seen how the support of the Latin voters has been eroding before his eyes. The question is if they are ready to assume another political risk being opposed to the migratory reform.

In Washington, a coalition of approximately 200 groups that include approximately 800 activists, they have just thrown the campaign “A Migratory Reform for the United States”. They are entrusted that this time the project will be successful. It is a coalition bigger and organized, determined to use every lobbying effort, not only to influence the Acropolis, but also to change the perception into the public opinion about the importance that has to repair our cracked migratory system.

While the president Obama was preparing himself to assemble with leaders of the Congress in order to discuss the migratory reform, the administration was sending some positive signs. The Department of Justice revirtió a resolution of the administration Bush that was denying to persons that they were facing the deportation the right to a hearing if his cases had been taken badly. Then, the Department of Internal Safety suspended temporarily the widows' deportations that did not manage to legalize his status in the United States before his husbands they were dying. And several recent decisions in the courts have been in favor of victims of migratory raids in whom his civil rights have been violated.

The migratory reform is necessary. Local and state efforts to establish their own antiimmigrant laws have failed in most cases for be considering to be unconstitutional. The negative tone of the migratory debate during the last two years has had terrible consequences: an increase in the crimes of hate and more discrimination that they affect not only to the undocumented immigrants but to many Latin Americans, legal or not. 12 million undocumented immigrants are still here, have returned to the shades, hiding and living with fear. Between more let's wait, more undocumented immigrants will come and more the problem will grow. The hour of a migratory reform has come.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.