Sonoma County groups plan for Day Without Immigrants

More than 100 Sonoma County residents will convene Monday at the San Francisco Federal Building to apply pressure on President Joe Biden over his stalled social spending plan, legislation the rally’s organizers say must include a pathway to citizenship for the country’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Members and supporters of various organizations from elsewhere in the region are expected to join the Sonoma County contingent during the hourlong rally, which starts at noon, said Renee Saucedo, one of the organizers behind the event.

Monday’s gathering, one of several planned throughout the country, including in Chicago and Washington, D.C., will coincide with a related Day Without Immigrants event, in which the country’s undocumented immigrants aim to show the impact of their contributions in the U.S., Saucedo said.

They’ll try to do that by forgoing work, keeping their kids from school and closing their wallets. A similar event was held in the U.S. in 2017 in protest of former President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall.

Among the local groups that will participate in the demonstration in San Francisco include the North Bay Organizing Project, the Graton Day Labor Center, the Women’s Action and Solidarity Alliance, a domestic worker advocacy group that Saucedo oversees.

The rally will include speeches from Latinx and indigenous community members, as well as performances from local musicians and Aztec dancers, according to rally organizers.

“We are participating along with other cities and counties across the country to say that the immigrant community and our allies won’t work, we won’t go to school and we won’t buy in order to show that we do have political power,” Saucedo said. “That when our government makes promises to us, like passing a just immigration reform law, they need to keep their promise.”

Monday’s event represents the latest local push for federal immigration reform that grants permanent legal status, a change undocumented immigrants and their supporters say has been long overdue.

Such sweeping immigration reform hasn’t happened since 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act granted legal status to nearly three million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. before 1982.

Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which initially included a legal path to citizenship for some immigrants, served as a beacon of hope for many undocumented immigrants seeking to gain permanent legal status in the U.S.

But the legislation, which was later rolled back to provide only temporary reprieve from deportation, has since floundered in Congress despite Biden’s continued push for its passage.

On Monday, rallygoers’ message to Biden will be to advocate for stronger immigration reform action as part of his bill, Saucedo said.

“Temporary status would be helpful, and it’s better than nothing, but the community is really rallying around papers for all,” Saucedo said. “Permanent residency.”

Isabel Lopez, founder and executive director of the nonprofit culture and arts organization Raizes Collective, said she’s seen the disparate impacts of that 1986 amnesty legislation play out in her own family.

While the legislation and a related presidential executive action led Lopez to get her citizenship in the U.S., her siblings who were over the age of 18 at the time did not fit the criteria and continued to live without legal status in the U.S., she said.

“Even within my own family, we became separated between those who have and those who do not,” Lopez said. “They were not able to take advantage of those opportunities presented to them because of their undocumented status.”

Raizes Collective is one of the local groups who helped plan Monday’s rally.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.