This Saturday, Oct. 5, a broad and diverse coalition of immigrant, faith, labor, civil rights and family groups will march and rally in more than 80 actions across the nation and call on Congress to pass immigration reform with a road map to citizenship that promotes family unity and protects workers’ rights.

Take the pledge to hit the streets Oct. 5. 

More than 200,000 families have been separated by deportation since July 2010. In case you missed it, last week The Dream is Now released a new music video highlighting the importance of keeping families together and supporting a common sense road map to citizenship for aspiring Americans. 

Check out the video and call your representative to support immigration reform at 1-888-787-9658.

The U.S. Senate just voted 68–32 (with 14 Republicans joining all 54 Democrats) to approve immigration reform legislation that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says will move the nation “a big step closer” to building a commonsense immigration system that will allow millions of aspiring Americans to become citizens. 

Now it is up to the House of Representatives to follow the Senate’s lead by allowing a majority of House members to vote on a bill with a road map to citizenship.

Worker protections, a road map to citizenship, family unification...these are the priorities of union members and working families this week as the Senate Judiciary Committee continues its markup of the immigration reform bill. 

Today, Republican senators are debating the SAFE Act, which would increase inhumane detentions and harmful policies that tear families apart from each other. 

The Obama administration should suspend deportations of aspiring citizens who would be eligible for a pathway to citizenship under a commonsense immigration reform bill that is under consideration in the U.S. Senate, a group of labor—including the AFL-CIO—Latino and other immigration reform advocates told the White House earlier this week.

Sebastian Velasquez saw his family for the last time when they were helping him move into his Georgetown University dorm before the start of his first semester. A few months later, he found out that his father, mother and sister were in deportation proceedings. They were eventually deported to Colombia.

It's a simple holiday wish: having your family together. For many immigrant children, having mom or dad at home is all they want. In the first six months of 2011, 46,000 parents of children were torn away from their families and deported. Now, children are writing to Congress to ask for action to stop these deportations. 

Neidi Dominguez, an organizer with the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, sends us this excerpt from her opinion column on Politics 365. 

When President Obama announced in June that he would grant certain young, undocumented immigrants the opportunity to avoid deportation and work legally in the United States, thousands of people felt the cloud of stress and fear, which shadows our lives, begin to lift. That announcement was an important step to advance the rights of aspiring citizens in this country. 

Imagine if you were a child and living in constant fear of losing your parents.

For many children of aspiring citizens, potential loss of one or both parents is a day-to-day reality. Deportations can force children into foster care when their parents are shipped out of the country and leave single mothers struggling to make ends meet.

A new Center for American Progress report highlights how deportations break up families and negatively affect the entire community.

Pablo Alvarado, president of the National Day Laborers’ Organizing Network, says in an op-ed in yesterday's Miami Herald that there is reason to believe attitudes are changing against the "Arizona approach" to immigration policies. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the racial profiling provision of S.B. 1070, Alvarado says President Obama's announcement to halt the deportation of those young immigrants who would be eligible for U.S. residency under the terms of the DREAM Act illustrates this shift in thinking.