Sussex Countian: Hundreds rally in Georgetown for immigration reform
media mention(Original Post)
Posted May 1, 2013 midnight
Hundreds of people gathered at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church on May 1 to rally for immigration reform. This effort is one of many May Day protests against immigrant deportation that occurred across the country. Of those at the rally were Maxima 900 AM & 106.1 FM, La Esperanza, the Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement, CASA in Action, faith leaders, and impacted immigrant families and their supporters. According to the event’s coordinators, Delaware’s immigrant population stands at 9 percent, and just short of half of those immigrants are naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote. Unauthorized immigrants in Delaware paid $13.3 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. Delaware’s 1,533 Latino-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $339.9 million and employed 2,129 people in 2007, the last year for which data is available. The state’s Asian-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $1.3 billion and employed 5,523 people in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners. Wednesday’s rallies were heavily focused on the “Commonsense Immigration Reform” now under consideration by the U.S. Senate. The reform, according to a statement made by President Barack Obama on April 16, would “provide a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million individuals who are already in this country illegally. And it would modernize our legal immigration system so that we’re able to reunite families and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create good paying jobs and grow our economy.”