A coalition of religious leaders in the Latino community from 17 states is fighting for amnesty for thousands of undocumented workers in the United States amidst adverse conditions and strict security measures since September 11 and during the war in Iraq.

Rev. Miguel Rivera presides over the National Coalition of Ministers. EFE reported that he hired the law firm Adam Carter in Washington, D.C. to lobby for an amnesty project and has also talked with several senators, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Frist (R.-Tenn.).

According to Rivera, Frist is committed to an amnesty initiative. “We agreed that the best way to solicit amnesty is through the church. The ministers see what the needs of our community are and how we suffer for our legal status, and they recognize that this is our responsibility,” Rivera said.

The Board of Directors of the Coalition, which represents 2,500 churches and thousands of parishioners, held a meeting last week in New Jersey with Sen. John Corzine (D-N.J.), who talked about the possibility of a “flexible amnesty.”

“Right now we are interested in what we can achieve. The reality is that amnesty is necessary in order to fortify the nuclear family and is the civic responsibility of this country,” Rivera said at that meeting.

Rivera is aware that the struggle for amnesty will take time given that the country’s attention is focused on Iraq at the moment.

However, he added that the Coalition would not give up its efforts towards what it considers a crucial initiative considering the increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants, whose presence has also grown in churches.

Rivera emphasized that 15 percent or more of the parishioners in the 52,000 Evangelical-Latino congregations in the United States are new immigrants. Of these, about half are undocumented.

“One of the reasons the Coalition was organized in 1999 was to raise consciousness among reverends about their civic and political responsibility in the community. This, with an emphasis on the immigration problem, because, according to statistics, the Latino Pentecostal churches have grown by more than 30 percent,” said Rivera.

Even though the Coalition is fighting for all undocumented immigrants—who, according to the census, number 8 million in the United States—Rivera stated that the Latino community should receive preference for amnesty because the United States has a “moral debt” to Latin America.

According to the Reverend, the exploitation of Latin America’s natural resources at the hand of American businesses provoked poverty and thus obligated thousands of Latinos to immigrate to the United States in search of a better life.

Rivera added that the Latino community “has never failed the values of peace and liberty of this country. On the contrary, if we look to history, we can see that our Mexican brothers and sisters suffered greatly for the development of this country.”

“There is no reason to include Latinos in the new immigration policies since September 11th. They should take precedence because the Latino community has been here for more than 100 years and we have never threatened the liberty of this country,” he concluded.