Knowing that immigration is essential to maintaining the productive, diverse and flexible workforce that the United States needs to ensure prosperity over the coming generations, a coalition of business and community leaders from across Wisconsin will come together to launch the “Reason for Reform” campaign at Centro Hispano on Wednesday, Aug. 3.

The event, hosted by the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Dane County and the Partnership for a New American Economy (NAE), will highlight the need for immigration reform and present new Wisconsin-specific data of the contributions of immigrants.

“The Reason for Reform is essentially an outreach call to action that is being facilitated by the Partnership for a New American Economy,” Mayra Medrano, president of the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Dane County, tells Madison365. “We have a call to action for comprehensive immigration reform so that we can bring people from all political backgrounds – Republican, Democratic, Independents – together to make a collective economic case for immigration reform.”

Latino Chamber of Commerce President Mayra Medrano
Latino Chamber of Commerce President Mayra Medrano

The Reason for Reform campaign will kick off with the release of 51 new reports (one for every state + Washington D.C.) and events in all 50 states urging members of Congress to take action to enact reform. The Partnership for a New American Economy is bringing together more than 500 Republican, Democratic and Independent mayors and business leaders who support immigration reforms that will help create jobs for Americans today.

“I think from my voice on this campaign, coming from the Latino side, it’s not really about what party you represent. It’s essentially moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform. It’s about bringing together all party lines,” Medrano says. “There’s no, ‘which side are you on?’ type of conversations. It’s having everybody come to the table to talk about how the current immigration system is not working.”

The Partnership for a New American Economy’s members include mayors of more than 35 million people nationwide and business leaders of companies that generate more than $1.5 trillion and employ more than 4 million people across all sectors of the economy, from agriculture to aerospace, hospitality to high-tech and media to manufacturing.

Ed Lump, CEO and president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association
Ed Lump, CEO and president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association

The press conference, scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 2, 11 a.m., at Centro Hispano, 810 W. Badger Rd., will highlight the need for immigration reform with numerous speakers including Medrano; George Klaetsch of New American Economy; John Holevoet, Dairy Business Association; and Ed Lump of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association.

“From the economic sense, we all agree on how the food and beverage industry is in Wisconsin and Dane County and the importance of agricultural [workers] … there’s a bottom line to all of that,” Medrano says. “If we in Wisconsin don’t continue promoting and investing in immigrants, our economy will not survive. We rely heavily on the immigrant workforce. It’s about time that we bring attention to it from an economics standpoint.”

The launch of the “Reason for Reform” campaign event is free and open to all.

“The Latino Chamber of Commerce is about economic development and it’s about business creation and workforce development. For us, we want to bring attention to the investment of for-profit causes. We understand that small businesses drive our community and that local businesses are important to our community because they create jobs locally for those who are invested, live here, work here, and go to school here,” Medrano says. “We want to shine some light on the fact that there are some Latinos in our area that have been around for many, many years and have created jobs. They’ve met needs here. There just hasn’t been attention brought to the fact of how important immigrants are to local economies.”