LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — A Missouri Senate bill designed to take a count of undocumented students is creating controversy, as dozens of Kansas City churches have signed on to a letter in opposition to the bill, saying that they believe that the bill is not only unconstitutional, it’s also against their faith.

Missouri Sen. Will Kraus, a Republican from Lee’s Summit, says that his bill isn’t trying to “out” undocumented workers and their families. Instead, he says that it only aims to take a count of their numbers.

“The legislation is very clear,” said Kraus. “This list is not to identify any individual as much as it is to identify the cost of the education.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Leaders from 50 churches on both sides of Missouri are calling for state lawmakers to stop considering a bill targeting immigrants.

Senate bill 580 would give police officers the right to check immigration status, if officers feel there is probable cause.

The immigrant could be cited with a misdemeanor if they don’t have identification.

Church leaders say the bill will do more harm than good.

Dr. Rev. Ron Faust, of Disciples of Christ said “it promotes fear and paranoia and (I could be) perceived as a criminal if I helped someone who was undocumented.”

Another part of the bill would require schools to report the status of suspected illegal students.

Church leaders say the ending result would hurt all families.

Read the complete article here.

In Alabama and across the country, mean-spirited and racist anti-immigrant laws are threatening the livelihood of many working families and small businesses. At a moment when Americans of all walks are uniting around the sentiment of the 99 percent movement, politicians continue a never-ending charade to distract and divide us, ignoring the economic and social consequences in the process.

A young successful student and hard worker with a great love for the US, Has a dream, her American Dream. But suddenly her DREAM is stopped.

Dozens of Tennessee faith leaders urged Republican presidential candidates to keep the bitter rhetoric on immigration out of the Volunteer State. Tennessee’s Republican presidential primary is March 6.

The plea came Feb. 9 in the form of a statement signed and released by some 45 leaders representing the Abrahamic faiths across Tennessee.

“We are faith leaders in Tennessee who share the goal to advance the common good,” began the statement. “We teach the Golden Rule and seek to treat others as we would want to be treated. We believe all people of faith and goodwill must welcome the stranger, protect the vulnerable and seek justice for the poor.”

The one-page statement went on to say that Tennessee’s faith leaders have taken several initiatives on the issue of immigration. The statement spoke only in general terms, noting that leaders have been “challenging the negative and untruthful narratives that generate bigotry and falsehoods.”

Read the complete article by EthicsDaily here.

A group of local clergy have signed a letter in opposition to the E-Verify proposal on the ballot Tuesday and will announce their position at a public event this afternoon.

Using biblical texts to support their position, the group refers to the proposed ordinance, called Question 1, as “unjust” and says such a law would “prove detrimental to our local community and economy…”

The Rev. Phil Snider, pastor of Brentwood Christian Church, said the 20 names on the letter represent a fraction of clergy who support the position. The names, he said, were gathered quickly by word of mouth and do not include the “significant number of clergy in Springfield” who find the ordinance “problematic for a number of reasons.” More names are likely to be added today.

Read the complete article from News-Leader here.

2011 was a record year for U.S. farmers, with farm income topping $100 billion. This includes sales of $22 billion in fruits and nuts and $21 billion in vegetables and melons – crops that rely on immigrant farm labor.

But even as U.S. farmers prospered in 2011, those working on farms had less to celebrate.

The nation’s agricultural mecca – Fresno Country, California – had the state’s highest agricultural sales ($5.9 billion) and its highest poverty rate – 27 percent. More than 36 percent of the county’s children were poor, also the highest rate in the state. As one agricultural expert puts it, “High farm sales and high poverty rates often go together.”

Low wages, the seasonal nature of agricultural work, and, for many, unauthorized immigration status make it difficult for farm workers and their families to escape poverty. Farm workers’ high poverty rates aren’t totally attributable to immigration status, but it’s certainly one of the causes: 71 percent  of all hired farm workers in the United States are immigrants, and about half of them are in the country illegally.

Poverty among farm worker families has decreased greatly since the mid-1990s, when more than half of all farm worker families were poor. Today 23 percent of farm workers nationally  live below the poverty line.

Read the complete article here.

Small steps may be the key to reforming our largely unjust and broken immigration system.

One of those small steps is exactly what the nation witnessed when H.R. 3012 was passed by a whopping 389 votes in the House. The vote, which took place last Tuesday night, marks the first immigration bill that has passed either chamber of Congress with bipartisan support since the DREAM Act passed the House in 2010. H.R. 3012, also know as The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011, has two main pieces to it.

First, it would eliminate country-based caps on employment based visas. According to the Capitol Immigration Law Group, “the current law places a limit so that immigrants from a country can obtain no more than 7% of the 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas (or green cards) issued annually. That cap applies equally to all countries, regardless of the country’s population and creates an imbalance and backlogs for larger countries such as India and China.” In fact, there is a 70 year wait for applicants in China and a 20 year wait for those in India. The bill would help streamline this backlog by cutting many years off of this wait.

Second, it would boost the percentage of family based visas per country from 7 to 15 percent. This adjustment could slightly ease the backlog for naturalized citizens, particularly from Mexico and the Philippines, trying to bring relatives into the country.

Read the complete article.

As I sat down to write this blog post, about our upcoming protest on December 7th in Newark over the for-profit immigration detention contract, I was tempted to lead with statistics about the percentage of foreign born residents in Essex County. Then I remembered a quote from a book on racial justice by Father Bryan Massingale. “We act justly not because we are intellectually convinced, but because we are passionately moved. Compassion moves the will to justice.”

As a movement and as individual activists, there is a tendency toward providing facts, data and statistics that support just immigration policy. There is the belief that if only we could effectively combat the tremendous body of misinformation we would prevail. The problem is that one of the primary tactics of the campaign against immigration reform is an attempt to dehumanize an entire group of people.

Read the complete article.

Included: The strategy to stop secure communities, additional resources, what you can do in your community, bringing the faith message, and more.