Faith-based organizations still hoping for immigration reform in Congress are devoting the next several weekends to raising awareness and support of the DREAM Act – the Development, Relief & Education for Alien Minors Act. Churches, synagogues and mosques started holding DREAM observances on Sept. 16 and will continue though Oct. 9.

ReligionLink reports that congregations are being urged to use their regular weekly worship service to focus on the need for immigration reform, specifically the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act failed to pass during the lame-duck session of Congress earlier this year and was reintroduced in the Senate in May. But its prospects are unclear despite continued efforts by faith-based activists and a May speech in Texas by President Barack Obama backing reform.

Meanwhile, the battle over immigration reform has shifted from Capitol Hill to state legislatures, and a number of states have passed laws that focus on enforcement rather than on overhauling the system, as federal proposals would do. Arizona’s immigration law, passed in 2010, has become a model for other states, including Utah, Georgia and Alabama.

The Obama administration has joined religious leaders in Alabama in suing to block the new law.

ReligionLink has several stories and commentaries on the issue of religion and immigration:

The DREAM Sabbath initiative is being promoted by groups like the Interfaith Immigration Coalition and is being promoted by various denominations and affiliates, such as United Methodists and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Read an Aug. 24, 2011, Associated Press story about efforts by the administration and civil rights and religious groups to fight the Alabama law. The Alabama law requires schools to check whether students are in the country legally, requires all businesses to check the legal status of workers and makes it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.
Read an Aug. 10, 2011, story by CNN, “Record year for immigration-related legislation.”
EthicsDaily.com, a division of the Baptist Center for Ethics, released a documentary on immigration, “Gospel Without Borders.” The film was produced primarily with funding from the United Methodist Foundation of Arkansas but features religious leaders from various denominations.
Southern Baptist delegates in Phoenix, gathered for the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, adopted a resolution on immigration June 15, 2011, after sharp debates and divided votes on amendments regarding amnesty and enforcement. Read about it in stories from the Associated Baptist Press and Ethics Daily and in a Houston Chronicle blog post.
Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote a June 20, 2011, column in The Christian Post, “Immigration and the Gospel,” that calls on evangelicals to be welcoming to immigrants.
Read the textof Obama’s May 10, 2011, speech in El Paso, Texas, promoting comprehensive immigration reform.
Read a Jan. 24, 2011, statement from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service saying the agency is “gravely concerned that the punitive immigration bills being considered by many state legislatures would contradict the biblical mandate to care for sojourners in our midst.”


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