The road to passing the new immigration reform bill into law will undoubtedly be filled with heated debate from both sides, but advocates of the bill's passage could be getting support from crucial and unlikely sources.
The bipartisan panel unveiled their highly anticipated immigration bill on Wednesday--legislation that is expected to provide border security, create a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S., and enforce immigration background checks at the workplace.
Already critics from both the left and right have blasted the bill, the left claiming that the pathway to citizenship is too long while some conservatives say the legislation proposed by the "Gang of Eight" is basically amnesty.
However, evangelicals, a group that has largely been reluctant to support immigration reform, appear to be slowly coming around to embracing the bill.
Hundreds of evangelicals gathered Wednesday at Washington D.C., for what was called the "Evangelical Day of Prayer and Action for Immigration Reform." Evangelicals came from around the country to worship, pray and meet with legislators to push for the passage of immigration reform.
As Jenny Yang, a guest columnist for the Washington Post writes, the debate on immigration reform has been a tough one for the evangelical community, as they have struggled between giving compassion and mercy to immigrants while supporting the laws of the nation.
That, however, changed as evangelical pastors began speaking with more immigrants. As they built relationships with immigrants, pastors and other evangelicals "suddenly encountered a broken immigration system in which many cannot get right with the law even though they desire to," Yang wrote.
"Immigration has become not just an abstract political or economic discussion but a personal and moral issue for the evangelical community. It is about friends and real people in our community whom we have come to know in our church services and at our schools," she continued.
Chicago evangelica pastor Sandra Van Opstal, a member of InterVarsity's Latino leadership team, was also reluctant on the immigration issue at first, but was one of the most prominent voices at Wednesday's event.
"Few things are as polarizing as immigration, and we don't know what will happen, but now InterVarsity has a commitment to stay at the table," Van Opstal told the Post.
Focus on the Family, a nonprofit that promotes socially conservative views on public policy, is also becoming more supportive of efforts to pass immigration reform, a dramatic shift from their silence on the issue when immigration legislation was last proposed in 2006.
"Focus feels very strongly that the present situation is very tough on families and very tough on kids," Focus official Tim Goeglein said.
Another key group, Mexicans, is offering a cautious kind of optimism on the new immigration proposal. Some note that the pathway to citizenship is long, but the bill does finally offer them a way to become U.S. citizens the legal way.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department issued a statement Wednesday calling the bill "a positive step" towards solving the immigration issue, which has been a source of tension between the U.S. and Mexico in the past.
"The commitment expressed by President Barack Obama and members of both parties in Congress on this issue is very encouraging," read the statement. "As the U.S. legislative process proceeds, it will be fundamentally important that the contributions of migrants are taken into account, and that their rights are respected."
"There are some people who would like to become citizens right away," Ismael Mota Ortega, who heads the Illinois federation of clubs of migrants from Zacatecas, Mexico, told ABC News Univision. "But there are others who see things sensibly, that you have to demonstrate that you can truly be a good citizen, step by step."
Rodolfo Garcia Zamora, an immigration expert at the state university in Zacatecas, notes that Mexican families who have undocumented relatives living in the U.S. have wanted to bring stability to their situation "so that they can come and go, something they haven't been able to do since the crackdown in immigration policies."
However, Garcia Zamora worries that many immigrants may have a tough time leaning English and U.S. civics, one of the requirements for citizenship under the new legislation.
"There are a considerable number who might not qualify to start the process ... And then there is the question of English," Garcia Zamora said. "We have thousands of Mexican migrants who have spent their whole lives working in the United States, and because they have always lived in a Latino or Mexican community, they don't speak English."
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