Philadelphia phone bank urges passage of immigration law

With Congress poised to vote as early as this week on legislation granting permanent residency to an estimated 825,000 undocumented immigrants, supporters of the Dream Act inundated senators and representatives Tuesday with telephone calls urging passage as a step to broader immigration reform.

If enacted, the law would confer legal status on immigrants younger than 35 who came to the United States before age 16, have lived here for at least five years, and have completed at least two years of college or military service.

At the Nationalities Service Center, an immigrant resettlement organization in Center City, a 15-person phone bank went into action Tuesday, targeting Pennsylvania lawmakers Kathleen A. Dahlkemper, a Democrat defeated in November whose district encompasses Butler, Armstrong, and Erie Counties, and Tim Holden, a conservative Democrat whose district stretches from Pottsville to Harrisburg. Dream Act supporters consider their votes important if the bill is to pass this month in a lame-duck session.

Organizers say they are confident they have the votes of much of the rest of the Pennsylvania delegation. Several are among the bill's 40 cosponsors in the Senate and 133 in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have said they want action on the bill before the end of the year.

Since some members of the phone bank team are undocumented, their calls, they say, are arm's-length constituent pressure.

"We might not be able to vote ourselves," said call-bank organizer Maria Marroquin, 23, an undocumented immigrant from Peru. "But we have friends and family who are citizens and they do vote."

Marroquin, of Mount Airy, was 13 when her parents brought her and a younger brother and sister to the United States and overstayed their visas.

"We were children when we came here," she said. "We had no choice. We didn't make that decision. Since arriving we did everything that was asked of us. We are American in every way."

Raised in Cheltenham, she went to Montgomery County Community College, where she earned an associate degree in social science and a 3.98 grade-point average.

Because she is not permitted to work legally, she gets by with babysitting jobs, but would like to finish college and go to law school one day.

"We can make economic contributions to society throughout our lifetimes. [The Dream Act] is not just good for the students," she said, "it is an investment in our country."