Who said the eye of the storm is supposed to be peaceful?
With controversial comprehensive immigration reform lashing the Senate and tracking toward the House, CASA of Maryland Inc., an immigrant support and advocacy group at the local center of the undocumented-dweller dust-up, has, in a sense, learned how to row and bail water at the same time.
“It?s a document to educate our community about their rights ? the rights of any U.S. citizen,” Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA of Maryland, said of the nonprofit?s recently criticized immigrant-rights handbook.
“If the police stop you, you have the right to an attorney. You have the right to remain silent. … That is pretty much the message we communicate to our community,” he said.
The handbook, which encourages immigrants rounded up in workplace raids to decline giving much information to authorities, has been criticized by at least one congressman as possibly being a publicly subsidized blueprint for circumventing the law.
But Torres says the guidebook merely reflects the grand American tradition of ensuring individual rights against unwarranted government intrusion, which he believes is consistent with the $4.5 million, 67-employee group?s mission of assisting, training, counseling and advocating for Maryland immigrants of any nationality.
Sixty-five percent of the group?s funding, Torres said, comes from the private sector ? with Baltimore City, county, state and federal funding constituting the rest. There are an estimated 250,000 undocumented residents in Maryland, according to Torres, who backs, “with a lot of changes,” the compromise bill now before Congress.
He is planning a rally for the bill on June 19 as it moves to the House of Representatives.
With worker-outreach centers in Silver Spring, Wheaton, Gaithersburg and Germantown, and one under construction in Baltimore City, 22-year-old CASA of Maryland offers ? for a $15 one-time fee ? its 20,000 customers job-placement services; vocational training; legal advice; translation and notarization help; and computer, language, citizenship and financial literacy classes.
“I think they?re a phenomenal organization,” said Maria Welsh, president of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “They?re very dedicated to their mission, which is to help the immigrant population in work force development and to understand what the laws are.”
