(Georgetown, DE) – This Wednesday at 5 pm, thousands will pour into historic downtown Georgetown to call on Congress to pass commonsense immigration reform that supports families and strengthens communities.
Held in coordination with dozens of actions across the United States designed to keep families together NOW, the Georgetown event will be one of the largest in the country and will be nestled in Delaware’s farming region, an industry that relies on the daily contributions of immigrant labor. Rally participants will include impacted immigrant families, their neighbors, faith leaders, employers, and community representatives.
Delaware’s immigrant population has practically trebled in the twenty years between the 1990 and 2010 Census rising to almost 9 percent today. Just short of half of Delaware immigrants are naturalized citizens eligible to vote.
Unauthorized immigrants in Delaware paid $13.3 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to data from 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 peoplein 2007, the last year for which data is available, while the state’s 2,989 Asian-owned businesses had sales and receipts of $1.3 billion and employed 5,523 people, according to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners.
Despite the contributions already made to Delaware by immigrant communities, economic benefits are only expected to grow if comprehensive immigration reform legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Senate passes.
But, Wednesday’s rally will be focused more on the real human stories of people – U.S. citizen children, DREAMers, moms and dads – caught in the broken immigration system.
