‘We Americans are all immigrants – we must stop the old turning on the new’
July 29, 2010 Comment on this story
A woman describes her feelings as she starts a campaign to stop Arizona’s new anti-immigration law
Angelica Salas, 39, is travelling to Phoenix, Arizona, today along with 50 people from her campaign, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, to challenge the new anti-immigration law.
“We’re still going to demonstrate because this is just a preliminary injunction to the new law, it’s not a defeat of the law as such. We want everybody to fully understand that the threat has not gone away.
“We’ve been here before. Through this country’s history we have done wrong by people who were believed not to be American citizens. Yet the thing about America is that everybody here is an immigrant, and we must stop repeating the pattern.
“I came to America from Mexico when I was five, crossing the border with my sister to join my parents who were undocumented workers. My father worked as a groom at the race track, in laundries and as a roofer. My mother was in the garment industry.
“We were lucky – we managed to use a one-off amnesty to gain legalisation in 1980 before Ronald Reagan shut off the opportunity in 1986.
“When people ask me what all these undocumented immigrants are doing in this country, I reply: ‘We are working for you, making this country great. We are looking after your children, making your houses beautiful, tending your gardens, so that you can thrive and raise your families. We are working for you.’”
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