Published by: Shawn Gremminger on 6/20/2011 6:08:55 PM
Recognizing the cost of uncompensated care associated with treating undocumented immigrants – and the terrible cost of our broken immigration system on our patients themselves – NAPH included “Support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” on its 2011 Federal Advocacy Agenda. My colleagues and I met with a dozen or so key coalition partners and Capitol Hill champions and quickly came to one sad conclusion: it isn’t happening this year. Or next year. Maybe in 2013, if we’re lucky.
Through one of our member hospital systems – Sinai Health System in Chicago – we were introduced to the dedicated folks at the American Jewish Committee, whose Bridging America Project is dedicated to supporting Comprehensive Immigration Reform. After participating in two roundtable discussions with DC immigration reform leaders in May, I attended the project’s summit in Washington.
I was struck by the passion and dedication of the people at the summit. This is an issue with a much broader constituency than I originally realized – everyone from immigrant rights groups to pro-business free-trade types to faith based communities which span the ideological spectrum. After hearing their stories, I found that the concerns I was hearing seemed eerily familiar to the discussion in the health care reform community in the few years before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010.
The immigration reform community is disappointed by its lack of legislative success over the past years and decades. They are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of leadership coming from their “friends” on Capitol Hill and a president most of them supported. They are frustrated by what seems to be a growing anti-immigrant sentiment across the country.
Yet they continue to have hope. Demographic, political and economic trends clearly show the need for immigration reform – and its likely success one day. They are hopeful that the 113th Congress will be a friendlier than the 112th. They are hopeful that as more legal immigrants register to vote, their voice will not be ignored forever.
Watching impassioned conservative and liberal thinkers sitting next to one another on the same dais agreeing on the need for change gave me hope – and made me think about why we don’t see that more in the health care community.