Skip to content
LPBN-Icon-v1
ImmigrationProf Blog
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Immigration activists follow Senator into bathroom, demanding action on reconciliation bill

By immigrationprof

Senator_Kyrsten_Sinema_0

Official Photo  from U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona)  website

The heated battle over immigration reform, budget reconciliation, and related issues continues.  Bryan Pietsch for the Washington Post reports that anger and frustration over the refusal of U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona)  to follow Senate Democrats boiled over in Phoenix.   Last week,

“[a]ctivists followed Sinema into a bathroom at Arizona State University, where Sinema is a lecturer, as they urged her to pass the reconciliation bill that she has held locked in negotiations. As she was exiting a classroom at ASU’s campus in downtown Phoenix, activists from the organization Living United for Change in Arizona, or Lucha, confronted Sinema, telling her that `we need a ‘build back better’ plan right now,’ invoking the name of the $3.5 trillion domestic policy bill that would expand the social safety net. . . . One person followed her into the bathroom, standing outside the stall that the senator entered, while another person stood at the entrance, recording the interaction. `We knocked on doors for you,’ the person filming told Sinema while she was in the stall. A toilet flushed, and Sinema ignored the people as she washed her hands and walked back to the classroom as the activists chanted, `Build back better, back the bill!’”

The budget reconciliation bill had been set to include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the immigration measure was “not appropriate” for the bill, which Democrats are seeking to pass through budget reconciliation and a simple majority. But activists have continued to push party leaders to pass immigration reform. T

The person filming identified herself as Blanca told Sinema that “we need this pathway to citizenship,” explaining that she was undocumented and had been brought to the United States as a child. “We wouldn’t have to resort to confronting” Sinema, the activist group tweeted, “if she took meetings with the communities that elected her.”

KJ

Posted in:
Current Affairs