Our Thriving Home: OneAmerica Announces New Immigration Platform

Together, we can organize to build the power we need to transform our society – to create our thriving home.

We are excited to announce our new immigration platform, Our Thriving Home. An opportunity for us all to re-energize ourselves in the fight for immigrant power and collective change. Watch a short video where our Executive Director Roxana Norouzi and Leadership Development and Education Manager Kaitie Dong, share the unique moment we are in, our platform, and how you can take action.

THE MOMENT WE ARE IN

After four years of our communities being targeted and attacked under Trump, we were exhausted but energized and ready to fight to undo the harm and create a just immigration system under a new administration. Trump targeting our communities engaged more people than ever before in demanding justice for immigrants. In 2021, we led a strategic campaign to fight for a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented community members whose home is here. We built a powerful movement that moved key targets like Senator Patty Murray to become champions, fighting to include a pathway to citizenship as a part of the Build Back Better bill.

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Unfortunately, it took only one powerful, wealthy, white male senator to kill Build Back Better, and Democrats caved. The Biden administration and Congress have undone some of Trump’s damage but have failed to take real steps towards a just immigration system and doesn’t have a vision for our communities. It’s been 30 years since we saw real change to our unjust system and our community has been let down again.

We now face a choice. We could give up the fight, stay home, stay quiet and accept the unjust system we experience as inevitable. We know that if we don’t fight for ourselves, it’s unlikely others will. OR we can regroup, create a vision rooted in justice, and fight to make the changes we know are necessary. We can center our vision on both short term demands that will make our lives better right now, even if they are limited in scope, while never taking our eyes off the larger systemic change and vision we know we need. Now that we’ve been knocked down, how will we get up again?

 

OUR IMMIGRATION PLATFORM VISION – OUR THRIVING HOME

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We’re united in our vision of a world where people like us – immigrants and refugees – can thrive. Our thriving home is a place where we are equal, valued and loved. 

To get there, we need an immigration system that is just and recognizes human dignity, the right to freedom of movement and the right to citizenship. We need an education system that honors our culture and language, provides our children with high quality early learning and that pays our early learning workers fairly. We need a democracy where people like us are represented and have real power. We’re ready to fight for our vision of our thriving home at every level – in DC, in our state, and in our local communities.

While we fight for a just immigration system in DC, we’ll show what a pro-immigrant society can look like by creating our thriving home in Washington. We’ll center immigrants in decision-making, block the harm of the federal immigration system and build communities where we thrive. We’ll make Washington a home where we’re all welcome and can thrive no matter our immigration status, a model for other states to follow, and a driver of change in DC.

Here’s what we’ll do to create our thriving home:

  • We’ll fight to keep our families together and free, ending immigrant incarceration and deportation locally.
  • We’ll work to ensure we all have what we need by including everyone in our social safety nets, regardless of immigration status.
  • We’ll fight to reform racist election systems by challenging unfair laws that keep immigrants, refugees and people of color from mobilizing our communities to vote, run and win so people like us can govern.
  • We’ll push for an education system where we belong, one that honors our culture and language.
  • We’ll work to ensure our children have high quality early learning, and that early learning workers, often immigrant women of color, are paid fairly and respected.
  • We’ll fight to make sure the rich pay their share towards this future of thriving abundance, knowing that right now those of us with the least pay the most.

TAKE ACTION

To create our thriving home we must act powerfully, together.

We will organize building powerful bases of people across Washington that will fight alongside us.
We will tell our stories shifting the public narrative to reflect the strengths and contributions of our communities.
We will demand more getting public commitments from our elected officials and keeping them accountable.

Will you join us in building our thriving home? Sign on in support and commit to taking action with us to create the thriving home we know we deserve.