It will be undoubtedly a historical moment. On Tuesday, the 20th of January the entire world will have the eyes put in the staircases of the Acropolis in Washington to attend the swearing-in of the first American African president in the United States. Not only for the historical nature of the event but because many persons need desperately a change. Big illusion exists on what Barack Obama will bring to the presidency, to the country and to the world. And they all seem to have a list different from priorities. For the Latin Americans it is a migratory reform.

Obama has said that it will work so that a migratory reform is done during the first year of his administration, but the proponents of the same one cannot wait for so much time. Groups of evangelical Latin Americans took a section of the Acropolis last week and literally they prayed so that a migratory reform takes place in the first 100 days of the new administration.

The conferee of Illinois, Luis Gutiérrez, does not even want to wait 100 days. The dice that is ready to introduce a new proposal of migratory law the very same day in which Obama takes oath, expressing worry of which the elect president and his team of transition are not giving to the topic the importance that it deserves.

Gutiérrez warns that it does not have the impression that an urgency sense exists in the matter, since Obama has not expressed the possibility of an executive order to stop the raids. "They do not understand how every day our community is destroyed. To wait up to the end of year will mean that tens thousands are separated from his families", he mentioned.

There are no many details of what will include his proposal or in what it will be different from the proposal of Migratory Reform presented by Kennedy and McCain, which was pushed back by the Congress in the year 2007. The only thing that he has said is that it will include a route towards the legalization of undocumented immigrants and to the family reunification, and that he will try to accelerate the process to obtain a visa.

The urgency sense for the migratory reform became more clear even if the district attorney general Michael Mukasey did the surprising announcement that the immigrants who are in the middle of deportation processes, even those who look for refuge, already have not the right to open again his cases affected by errors committed by the lawyers who represented them in the past.

The decision received strong criticism of groups who look over the rights of the immigrants. The North American Foundation of Migratory Law condemned the action that it considered to be an assault against the constitutional beginning and accused the general district attorney of revertir years of legal achievements. "We are being outraged by this action", thought Nadine Wettstein, the Director of the Center of Legal Action AILF in a press release. "With this resolution, the administration tries to undermine the right of an immigrant to a hearing of impartial deportation", he criticized.

The Project of Rights of the Immigrant of ACLU considered the decision to be a dangerous measurement that moves away from the American tradition of just and impartial processes. "This order will have a tremendous negative impact in numerous persons who will be deported simply because of the errors or incompetence of his lawyers", it accused.
These are not very good news for the immigrants and for those who defend his rights, less than two weeks before it finishes the administration Bush. There have been eight difficult years that began to affect the immigrants since the terrorist attacks happened on September 11, 2001. Since then the immigrants, especially the Latin Americans, have been treated unjustly like criminal.

Barack Obama will have the weight of the world on his shoulders when it assumes the power. He inherits monumental problems in the United States and abroad. The future of million innocent immigrants who come to this country in search of a better life for his families and to contribute to the well-being of our country with his hard work, should be in his list of priorities.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.