National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC)

National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC)

Overview

* Part of the open borders lobby
* Views immigration reform as a racial issue


The National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC) emerged out of a joint declaration at the Latino Immigrant Summit, which 29 groups signed in February of 2004, advocating open-borders principles. Some of the most prominent groups in this new alliance were Alianza Dominicana, a grantee of the Casey Foundation; the Council of Latino Agencies, a grantee of the Fannie Mae Foundation; Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana (formerly the Hermandad Mexicana Nacional), which is headed by longtime open-borders radical Larry “Nativo” Lopez; and Proyecto Voz of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).

In November of 2004, these 29 organizations launched NALACC and, by 2010, this alliance had become one of the most influential open-borders coalitions in the United States, comprising 72 member groups in 12 states. In addition, NALACC is a member organization of the Earth Day Network, Environmental Defense, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the National Latino Congreso (NLC), which has included other prominent groups like the AFL-CIO’s Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the National Network of Day Laborers, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Sierra Club, and the William C. Velasquez Institute.

Angela Sanbrano serves as President of NALACC. A longtime immigration activist, she founded and headed the National Solidarity Committee for the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which was affiliated with the Communist guerrilla movement in that country during the 1980s. She is also the Board Secretary of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the Board Chair of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, and a board member of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Mirtha Colón, President of Hondurans Against AIDS, serves as the Executive Secretary of NALACC and is a member of the Service Employees International Union.

Other prominent members of NALACC’s Executive Committee are:

  • Teodoro Aguiluz, a co-founder of NALACC and Executive Director of the Central American Resource Center

  • Oscar Chacon, Executive Director of NALACC and former director of Enlaces América, a project of the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, which is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation

  • Maricela García, a founding member of NALACC, Director of Capacity Building at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum in Illinois

  • José Luis Gutiérrez, a founding member of NALACC and the National Alliance of Mexican Federations (CONFEMEX), and a former director of the New Americans Policy and Advocacy Office for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich

  • Ana Pérez, Executive Director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) in San Francisco, executive board member of the Salvadoran American National Network (SANN), and former Cuba Program Director at Global Exchange 

Since its founding, NALACC has largely viewed immigration reform as a racial issue. In 2007, Angela Sanbrano called for “an immediate moratorium on racist raids and deportations” – with Oscar Chacón contending that the main “difference between these [illegal immigrant] families and the rest of America is that these workers are brown and undocumented.”

In 2010, NALACC Vice President Juvencio Rocha Peralta restated his group’s position that racism pervades America’s immigration system: “We strongly believe that at the heart of our failed and misguided immigration system is a view of immigrant communities as ‘illegals’ and as ‘criminal aliens,’ racist abstractions that deny the real contributions of immigrants to U.S. society.”

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