March 21, 2010
PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Monami Maulik, (347) 385-9113
South Asian & Muslim Immigrant Workers March in DC
for Real Immigration Reform and No More War
Washington, D.C.- South Asian immigrant workers and youth members of DRUM from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Guyana, and Trinidad marched in Washington D.C. this weekend joining over 200,000 immigrants from across the country. DRUM-Desis Rising Up & Moving is an immigrant rights organization of low-wage South Asian workers and youth in New York City who have faced years of being undocumented, work for under minimum wage, and have been targeted for post 9/11 deportation. DRUM joins a growing number of groups nationally in demanding an immigration reform proposal far more humane than the “Four Pillars” announced by Senators Charles Schumer and Lyndsay Graham two days ago. DRUM also joined thousands more on Saturday, March 20th to raise the voice of Muslims profiled unjustly in the U.S. for a national march to end the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
After years of meeting with Senator Schumer, DRUM joins national alliances such as NALACC (National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities) and the American Friends Service Committee, and local groups such as VAMOS Unidos in expressing disappointment in the punitive measures of the Schumer outline which will further criminalize immigrants and spread an anti-immigrant backlash. The four pillars will use guest-workers to drive down wages for all workers, break more families by deportation, create a highly controversial national biometric I.D. system invading privacy rights, and exclude many from legalization such as Muslims racially profiled in background checks.
Shoshi Doza, Lead Organizer of DRUM and an immigrant herself who spent 10 years undocumented says, “Immigrant people are tired of political games being played with our lives. We want real legalization that will not take perhaps 10 years of waiting. Corporations, not poor immigrants, should sign “criminal confessions” for using us as slave-like labor for decades.” Mrs. P, a Bangladeshi immigrant worker in Queens spoke at the Asian American Pacific Islander pre-rally stating that, “I have lived here with my husband and child without paper for ten years. I work for less than $50 a day for 12 hour shifts. But even as South Asians, we will not tolerate even one more death by militarization at the border. This is a human issue. We demand a simple and direct legalization, not more punishment.”
DRUM will hold meetings with elected leaders in the next few months and mobilize again for the national day of immigrant marches on May 1st to campaign for a better immigration reform proposal. DRUM will join groups nationally as a member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to raise these key issues that need to be fixed in an immigration bill. NNIRR’s national statement can be read at: http://www.nnirr.org/news/index.php?op=read&id=426&type=8. DRUM will also continue to work to end the drone attacks killing Pakistani children and civilians and to organize for troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan though public mobilization campaigns to policy makers.