Grassroots pressure is also mounting for access to higher education for undocumented youth. In California, groups like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles have built strong support for new legislation that would allow undocumented students with three years of high school in the state to qualify for in-state tuition, instead of facing prohibitive out-of-state fees. "We've been fighting this battle for years," says Angelica Salas of CHIRLA. "But it's really taking off now as part of the larger struggle for legalization. People see these bright young people locked out of higher education, and they get a whole new image of who is undocumented and what the consequences are for them and the whole society."

Organizers in other states, including Georgia, Texas and Illinois, are also pushing for changes in state tuition rules. Many are hopeful that Congress will soon take up the higher-education issue with new legislation offering legalization to in-school youth. "This issue really clicks with people," says Rosita Choy of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "It would be a great interim victory."

The legalization movement is gaining new allies in other organizing networks, such as the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, a coalition pushing for restoration of safety net programs cut by the 1996 welfare law. "A new legalization policy would be one of the most important antipoverty policies we could enact," says Deepak Bhargava of NCJIS. "Since most undocumented immigrants live in families with legal immigrants or citizens, the impact would be really broad. If we're serious about building a strong multiracial economic justice movement, then legalization has to be on the table."

Activists are planning immigrant delegations to key members of Congress this spring and summer, seeking to breathe political life into the only existing federal legalization bill. Known as the Gutierrez bill (after Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez, who introduced it), it would create significant new legalization opportunities over the next five years, increase opportunities for legal immigrants bringing in family members and establish a task force on immigrant worker exploitation.

Internally, the movement must wrestle with some difficult issues, like how to craft an inclusive agenda that attracts a multiracial cross section of immigrants. According to Katie Quan, a policy specialist at the Center for Labor Research and Education in Berkeley, California, Chinese immigrant communities have distinct interests. "The proportion of undocumented tends to be lower, so while Chinese immigrants can understand the need for legalization, a more immediate concern is in expanding 'family reunification' for legal immigrants," says Quan. Ai-Jen Poo, an organizer with New York City's Women Workers Project of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, says that her organization is careful not to focus on legalization at the expense of other efforts. "In our Chinatown Justice Project, the rights of the undocumented are a huge issue," say Poo. "But massive evictions are the most immediate issue people face. For them, the word 'legalization' is as much about the rights of people in 'illegal' housing situations as it is about immigration status."

Finally, the legalization movement must navigate the minefield of race in America, building solidarity where it has sometimes been elusive in the past. "We can't forget how strongly racism influences public policy, and how successful the right has been in pitting one oppressed group against another," argues Timothea Howard, an African-American organizer with the National Organizers Alliance and a participant in a recent legalization strategy meeting in Washington, DC. "We have to be careful not to suggest that immigrants are somehow better or more deserving than other people struggling in this country."

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