Postville Raid Prompts
Immigration Ad Campaign
Catholic Sisters Promote Comprehensive
Immigration Reform
by Sallyann McCarthy, Communicator for the Sisters of St. Francis, Clinton, IA
This ad was placed in many Iowa newspapers in
response to the meatpacking raid in Postville, IA.
The outpouring of support for the victims of the May 12 immigration raid on the kosher meat processing plant in Postville, IA, has been widely reported and acknowledged. What is needed now, say the Catholic Sisters of the Upper Mississippi Valley, is comprehensive immigration reform.
Calls for comprehensive immigration reform also have come from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the U.S. Catholic bishops, the Iowa Catholic Conference, and religious leaders of all faiths throughout Iowa and the nation.
“We need to make the system fair, to eliminate the backlog of 15 or more years for people’s papers to be handled, and to create a means to reunite undocumented people with their blood relatives,” said Sister Judy Callahan, BVM, Director of Hispanic Ministry for the Archdiocese of Dubuque.
To help persuade legislators and candidates for public office to pay attention to the plight of undocumented workers and their families, Sisters United News (SUN), of which the Sinsinawa Dominicans are a member, are taking out radio and newspaper ads in media across the state of Iowa.
The ads ran in the following newspapers: Telegraph Herald, Dubuque; Muscatine Journal, Muscatine; Witness, Dubuque; Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, Waterloo; Clinton Herald, Clinton; Cedar Rapids Gazette, Cedar Rapids; Ottumwa Courier, Ottumwa; Catholic Messenger, Davenport; Globe, Sioux City; Quad City Times, Davenport; Catholic Mirror, Des Moines; and Catholic Times, La Crosse, WI.
Radio stations across the region aired throughout the month of June. Newspapers throughout the Upper Mississippi Valley where Sisters are ministering with immigrants and the families of the undocumented workers carried their pleas for help at the same time.
Produced through SUN, the radio message is this:
“Most Americans have compassion for suffering people. Yet some turn a cold shoulder to the anguish of undocumented families torn apart by the recent federal raids. Like Scandinavian, European, and Asian people before them, today’s immigrants come seeking only freedom and a better life for their children. Contact your legislators and candidates today to urge immediate action for comprehensive immigration reform. A message from the Catholic Sisters of this area.” The radio spot aired on stations WOC AM, Davenport; KDTH AM/KAT FM, Dubuque; KROS AM, Clinton; KCLN AM, Clinton; KSCJ AM, Sioux City; and WMT AM & FM/KISS FM, Cedar Rapids.
This is the second round of radio ads by the consortium of Sisters. In January 2007, they responded to a similar, smaller raid at a meat packing plant in Marshalltown, IA. In the spring of 2002, they mounted a statewide billboard campaign urging readers to “Welcome the immigrant you once were.”