WASHINGTON – Today in front of the White House, National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O’Neill joined roughly 300 others in an act of civil disobedience, urging President Obama to stop deporting parents and separating families.
“Congress has failed to act, so President Obama must step in to protect hard working immigrants and their families,” said O’Neill.
The fight for comprehensive immigration reform that meets the needs of immigrant women is long overdue. Women comprise 51% of immigrants, but make up less than one-third of recipients of employment visas each year. Seventy percent of immigrant women therefore enter the U.S. through the family visa system, which is so backlogged that women and children can wait decades to be reunited with their families.
The event in Washington was expected to be the largest immigration act of civil disobedience at the White House in history.