Hi Friend, The year began with the hope that the Biden Administration would reverse the harsh, anti-immigrant policies of the Trump Administration and that Congress might pass legislation offering pathways to citizenship for some groups of undocumented immigrants. Throughout the year, the Immigration Action Team (IAT) worked diligently in concert with other immigration and faith advocacy groups to promote reform of our broken immigration system to make it fairer and more just. The subject of immigration is complex, so to prepare for this year’s advocacy, the IAT offered an educational webinar to provide a brief history of US immigration and immigration law. Over 85 people attended. This was followed by a town hall meeting with 75 interested Unitarian Universalists and partner immigration organizations to help us plan our advocacy initiatives and to get feedback from our moral owners on which issues should be our highest priority. These educational opportunities resulted in our selecting three high-priority issues: - pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants,
- alternatives to detention, and
- just and humane treatment of immigrants arriving at the southern border.
Throughout the year we stayed in contact with other immigration advocacy groups to track the harms of the current situation, as well as the development of new executive orders and the progress of several immigration-related bills introduced in Congress, including the Dream and Promise Act, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act and others. During 2021, since last fall, we have done the following: - Conducted 29 virtual Senate office visits and one House office visit to advocate for pathways to citizenship, especially the inclusion of immigration-related provisions in the Build Back Better Act.
- Signed on to numerous letters to the Administration and Congress prepared by partner organizations and one amicus brief related to our high priority issues.
- Issued 6 action alerts resulting in 1,492 messages to members of Congress.
- Prepared two UUSJ letters to the Biden Administration: one urging the Administration to stop using the public health authority of Title 42 as a pretext to expel families and the other opposing the expulsion of Haitians asylum seekers and refugees.
- Invited impacted communities into our direct advocacy.
Importantly, we began to expand our reach beyond current UUSJ members and friends, because including constituents in our meetings with members of Congress makes them more impactful. The IAT team members have been reaching out directly to UU congregations across the country from Maine to Texas to Alaska and to local immigrant advocacy organizations. In our fall meetings with members of Congress, we included their constituents in each meeting. Partnering with local organizations was mutually rewarding because we often learned new information that helped us improve our advocacy and the local organizations were grateful to have new allies. We plan to continue these collaborations and additional ones. At this time in our history, our voice is very much needed. Please consider supporting our continued work in 2022 by becoming a member of UUSJ with a gift, or joining the Immigration Action Team (or any other team that calls to your justice passions). Sincerely,
Steve Eckstrand , Co-Convener Immigration Action Team UU Congregation of Rockville, MD Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice | 
