January 29, 2013

On Tuesday, Jan. 29, MPAC announced on the heels of MPAC President Salam Al-Marayati’s attendance of  President Barack Obama’s speech on comprehensive immigration reform in Las Vegas, it will be launching a national campaign on immigration reform in coming weeks.

SEE: President Obama Four Part Plan for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

“It’s time we take a moral approach to fixing our nation’s broken immigration system,” Al-Marayati said. “We are a nation of immigrants and it is refreshing to see the President prioritize this issue on his ambitious second term agenda.”

In 2010, MPAC released a major policy paper on comprehensive immigration reform, titled “Ineffective &  Unjust: Fixing Our Nation’s Broken Immigration System,” which outlines an immigration reform strategy based on four values:

1. Human Dignity
2. The Rule of Law
3. Fiscal Responsibility
4. Economic Growth

Much like the strategy the president outlined today, MPAC’s focus is on reforming the legal immigration system, earned legalization of undocumented individuals and developing effective immigration enforcement.

In his speech today, Obama said:

We all know that today we have an immigration system that is out of date and badly broken. A system that is holding us back instead of helping us grow. Now, the good news is that, for first time in many years, Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together.

Members of both parties, in both chambers, are actively working on a solution. Yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for comprehensive immigration reform, which are very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years.

This is an issue that affects all Americans, and as such, MPAC will be working to ensure that policies written toward reform include just and fair opportunities for all. It is our moral obligation as American Muslims to make sure that fixing our broken immigration system is based on an ethical foundation.