Immigration woes

Immigrant advocates and religious workers in Illinois are asking that arrested immigrants have more access to spiritual counseling, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Undocumented immigrants are often held behind bars for weeks before their cases go before a judge. Detainees are experiencing depression, anxiety and uncertainty about the fate of family members, advocates said at a press conference last week.

"There have been suicides," said Sister JoAnn Persch, a nun with the Catholic Campaign for Immigrant Justice who regularly prays with immigrant families outside a federal immigration detention center at Broadview, Ill., near Chicago.

The advocates seek state legislation that would grant clergy greater access to immigrant inmates in Illinois. They want religious workers to be free to pay unsolicited visits to immigrants, which local jails do not support.

Daniel Wegman of the Chicago Metropolitan Sanctuary Alliance said: "If workplace raids and immigration incarcerations increase, access to spiritual support must also increase."

On another front, agricultural groups are growing increasingly concerned about the availability of labor for various farm jobs. States likes California depend on immigrant labor to harvest their crops, as do other states in the Southwest, Midwest and even the Northeast. In New York, apple growers and onion farms are among those who use migrant workers. In addition, dairy farms have used Hispanic workers in year-round jobs.

That is why the New York Farm Bureau has designated immigration reform as a high-priority legislative issue. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is reported to be writing legislation that would help undocumented immigrants employed on farms to continue working for five years.

The requests for more clergy visits for imprisoned immigrants and the need for migrant farm labor are just two reasons why Congress needs to produce a comprehensive immigration bill, and soon.