On Tuesday, May 21, lift up your voices together and call your Senators and tell them that you support comprehensive immigration reform to address our nation’s broken system. Along with others across the country, tell Congress that you demand reform that does justice to our American and Reform Jewish values.  To get a reminder text about the call-in day, text “GESHER” to 877-877.  On Tuesday, call your Senators at 877-897-0174.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BWRqqFfQMao#!]

Today, over 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the shadows of our communities. Families face up to decades long backlogs in acquiring visas, workers are left without protections, children are left behind as parents are deported, and LGBT Americans cannot sponsor the visa of a spouse. We can, and we must, do better.

Call your Senators (click here for help identifying your senator and to email the senator), and urge them to support reform that includes:

• Reforms in our family-based immigration system to significantly reduce waiting times for separated families, who currently must wait many years to be reunited with loved ones, and to reunite all family-members including siblings, children, parents and spouses;
• Border protection policies that are consistent with American humanitarian values and effective against illegal migration, allowing the authorities to carry out the critical task of identifying and preventing entry into the United States of terrorists and dangerous criminals;
• Opportunities for hard-working immigrants who are already contributing to this country to come out of the shadows, regularize their status upon satisfaction of reasonable criteria and, over time, pursue a pathway to citizenship;
• Wage and workplace protections for those already living in America and contributing to our economy and for those who migrate here;
• Legal avenues for both high- and low-skilled professionals and their families who wish to migrate to the U.S. to enter our country and work in a safe, legal, and orderly manner that meets the needs of employers.

Encourage your Senators to support the bipartisan bill currently making its way through the legislative process, and to continue to uphold the humanitarian principles central to the Reform Movement.  

Our tradition teaches that “the sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied” (Pirkei Avot 5:8). Now is the time to turn our creeds into action, and to ensure that justice for our country’s most vulnerable is imminent and everlasting – that it is neither delayed nor denied.

Sarah Krinsky, Religious Action Center, Union for Reform Judaism