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Immigration and the Civil Rights Agenda
Rodríguez, Cristina
Rodríguez, Cristina
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Abstract
During Congress's efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 and 2007, media and academic commentators characterized the activism that animated the immigrant community as the beginnings of a civil rights struggle' -one that would dovetail with the growing political power of the country's Latino population to produce a major new social movement. These predictions were stirring, and the large-scale immigration marches of 2006, which helped prevent the passage of a House bill that would have made unlawful status a felony rather than adopt a legalization program, illuminated the agency and power of immigrant communities. But the intensity of organization reflected in those marches has been difficult to sustain. In addition, the interests of the Latino electorate and immigrants diverge and sometimes directly conflict, thus making a pan-Latino movement focused squarely on immigrants' rights a fraught proposition.