Background

We are fast approaching the first anniversary of the date that President Obama announced the DAPA program, and the week of November 15-21, 2015 has been selected as a time of national action to dramatize the lack of progress on alleviating the problems that immigrants face. The UUSJ Steering Committee urges members and congregations to make UU voices heard in the conversation on immigration by writing letters to their federal House members and Senators.

Currently, there is a tremendous amount of rhetoric about deporting the 11 million undocumented people living among us. Two courts have ruled against the President’s attempt to begin a program of deferring from deportation millions of undocumented parents of citizens or lawful permanent residents, a program known by its acronym, DAPA.  Also, a federal judge has ruled that the Obama Administration’s policies and practices for detaining undocumented immigrant families is in violation of a court settlement reached almost twenty years ago that stipulates the length and kind of treatment such families and children must receive in immigration detention.

Instructions

Letters should be addressed and hand-delivered to the Representative and Senators for whom the signer is a constituent. You can use the UUSJ sample letter to adapt for a sign-on letter or use as an example for writing your own. If you need help determining your elected officials and where their offices are located, you can use this tool.

Mailed letters may take three weeks or more to get to the Capitol Hill offices, due to security screening measures, so it is most effective to collect the signed letters and either deliver them yourself or get them to a member of the UUSJ Immigration Steering Committee: Dean Wanderer, Chair, (Accotink), David Strauss (UUCR), Don Chery (RRUUC), or Lavona Grow, UUSJ Chair (UUCA). 

Questions? Contact Elizabeth Stevens, UUSJ Administator, info@uusj.org or 202-600-9132