Immigration Newsletter

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Children’s “Wish for the Holidays” - Keep Our Families Together - New America Media

Children’s “Wish for the Holidays” - Keep Our Families Together - New America Media
New America Media, News Report, Elena ShorePosted: Dec 12, 2011
 
Izamar is asking Congress for one holiday wish: to keep her family together. 

The18-year-old from Waukegan, Ill., is facing a daughter’s worst nightmare: the prospect of losing a parent to deportation. Her father was arrested in February for driving without a license and is now in deportation proceedings.

“Sometimes I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything,” she writes. “I don’t know if I will be OK without him.”

Over 5,000 Letters

Izamar’s letter is one of more than 5,000 letters from young people across the country that were delivered to Congress last week, with one simple message: To keep their families together. 

The letters were part of the national campaign, “A Wish for the Holidays,” organized by We Belong Together, a project of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. 

“Children feel strongly that they have a voice in the policies made in this country, and the best way for them to have a voice is through letter-writing because they can’t vote,” said Andrea Franks, a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher in New York City. She spoke to journalists from the ethnic media during a teleconference hosted by New America Media and We Belong Together. Franks mobilized her students to send in more than 200 letters to Congress.