By Michael Hill
Correspondent
They come from different corners — labor, the clergy, civil liberties and more. But all with the same purpose: to make life better for undocumented immigrants and to make New Jersey more immigrant-friendly.
In English and Spanish, they say life in New Jersey without documentation equals humiliation and frustration.
“A lot of us who are here in this country want to live better, we want to do things better but if we are not given the opportunity it’s very hard for us to do so,” said Reynalda Cruz.
“So why not embrace immigrants? We are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, neighbors who contribute to the economy of helping to build this country,” said SEIU 32BJ member Cilia Ramirez.
In the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, this diverse group came to form the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.
The alliance is made up of 20 different organizations who’ve been fighting immigrations issues individually. They decided about two years ago that there’s strength in numbers, strength in unity so they decided to form an alliance.
“Together we are a lot stronger,” said SEIU 32BJ Vice President Kevin Brown.
Brown says the alliance will need to be strong to lobby for IDs and drivers’ licenses, and to stop police from checking papers for minor offenses and to make sure employers pay immigrant workers.
“The bottom line is there are 11 million immigrants in this country who are second class citizens and Rosa Parks understood you don’t have to be in the back of the bus. People should all be treated equally and right now we have two tiers of people in this country — those with documents and those without — and that is a civil rights violation and that is something that we are not willing to accept,” Brown said.
“We are a state of so many immigrants and one of the things we need to do is to come together and to raise our voices to make sure that the issues of the immigrant community are heard and addressed,” said SEIU 1199 Executive Vice President Milly Silva.
“New Jersey immigrant communities deserve policies that honor the contributions that they make to this state,” said Ari Rosmarin of the ACLU of New Jersey.
“We are here because we are convinced that immigrants who fled poverty, war, gang violence are not being treated fairly. I ask god to bless this effort that the courage, the conviction and the confidence that we demonstrate today may result in greater dignity for immigrants and their families,” said Father Eugene Squeo, First Friends of NY/NJ.
But Republican Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll says on drivers licenses, “Undocumented immigrants are not like everybody else. They’re illegal. They should go home.” On undocumented immigrants treated as second class citizens, Carroll says, “No they’re not because they’re not citizens.”
But Juan Martinez, who came here 28 years ago, says it’s about freedom.
“We know that we won’t get 100 percent but for me, Democracy is like water. We all need it,” he said through a translator.
The alliance hopes the resisters and detractors who have much different views about immigration won’t drown its efforts to make New Jersey more immigrant friendly.