The letter is a "gauntlet" and a "long overdue test" for the Obama adminstration. Activists and advocates need a sign, Chen writes, that the White House is serious about immigration reform, and not just further incarceration and penalty.

Advocacy groups aren't the only ones uniting in this struggle, as Alternet makes clear in "Asian Americans Mobilize for Immigration Reform." Something is different about this moment. "For the first time in the nation’s history," writes Vivian Po, "Asian American and Pacific Islander [API] groups came together this week to call for comprehensive immigration reform."

While immigration is often focused on Latinos, "Asian Americans also want to activate their network and become involved," said Tuyet Duong, senior staff attorney of Asian American Justice Center (AAJC). The campaign used new media such as text-messaging campaigns and Asian American blogs, attracting many younger voters. "This week's series of collective actions is the beginning of a larger movement for immigration reform," say API immigrant rights groups.

Last week's Wire touched on the overlap between health care and immigration reform. One in three Latinos are uninsured, as New America Media's Odette Keeley reports. Keeley speaks with Pilar Marrero, Political Editor for La Opinion about "the scapegoating of undocumented immigrants during the health care [debate]" and "the possible ramifications of these attacks on the debate for immigration reform." Of special note are some practical tips for those who have undocumented family members and experience a medical emergency.

While we are discussing physical injury and the uninsured, we should dwell on "The Dark Side of Dairies," at High Country News. It may as well have been titled "Got Justice?" Rebecca Clarren reports on an immigrant worker who was kicked by a cow while at work, and now has a steel plate in his face. "Gustavo," a husband and father of three, is afraid to use his own name, but gives a first hand account of the dangers and dark side of helping the U.S. dairy system move.

Unprotected and invisible, the majority of the Western United States' nearly 50,000 dairy workers are undocumented. But even though workers are killed by "tractor accidents, suffocated by falling hay bales, crushed by charging cows and bulls and asphyxiated by gases from manure lagoons and corn silage," as Marc Schenker, director of the Western Center for Agricultural Safety and Health puts it, "If you're undocumented, you won't complain."

How can a nation profit and subsist upon the efforts of workers who suffer like this? It's a skewed, postcolonialist view that lets one group of people profit off the pain of others.

And the U.S. isn't alone. The American Prospect's "Chicken Little Goes to Europe" clearly delineates that frame of mind. Stephen Holmes offers a rejoinder to the fears some in Europe have about the growing Muslim population within their borders. The fearmongering there mirrors anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. Simply replace "Muslim" with "Mexican." Scapegoating immigrants who change the culture to which they contribute is not a new phenomenon. Neither, however, is the ability to rise above these base reflexes and give voice and action to our better natures.