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• The open-borders arm of the Center for Community Change
• Advocates for social, economic, and racial justice

The Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) was established in 2000 as a project of the Center for Community Change (CCC), one of the most prominent and well-funded groups lobbying for open-borders legislation. CCC’s Immigrant Organizing Committee (IOC) functions as the governing body of FIRM and is itself composed of 30 organizations including, most notably, the Gamaliel Foundation.

FIRM describes itself as “a national coalition of grassroots organizations fighting for immigrant rights at the local, state and federal level.” In 2007, FIRM endorsed a series of principles advocating “economic justice” and an “increase” in the number of “refugees” coming into America, a declaration which it proceeded to send to Congress. FIRM states that its leading goals are to build a powerful progressive alliance and voting bloc by rallying “low-income and people of color communities.”

FIRM believes that America is a racist country and, therefore, needs to be radically transformed by the progressive community. In a February 2009 address to the Liberty Hill Foundation, Deepak Bhargava -- the socialist Executive Director of the CCC, a board member of George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and a co-founder of FIRM -- celebrated “the election of the first African-American president in a country that is still deeply structured by racism.” Bhargava argued, moreover, that Barack Obama’s election “expanded the electorate” and opened up “the possibility of permanent progressive change”; he speculated further that “the arc of history is maybe beginning once again, after forty long, hard, dark years to bend towards justice.”

FIRM has been quick to label any perceived opposition movement or organization as "racist." For example, while the first National Tea Party Convention was in progress in Nashville, Tennessee (February, 2010), Bhargava was among the first activists to propagate the narrative that the Tea Party movement was racist -- announcing that there “should be no place in America for this type of racial and ethnic hate-mongering.”

On April 23, 2010, FIRM attacked Arizona’s immigration law (SB 1070) -- which authorized state police to question suspected lawbreakers about their immigration status -- arguing that it “codifies racial profiling.” Gabe Gonzalez, CCC's National Campaign Director and a FIRM political strategist, declared that “at its core this [law] is about racism”; he called on President Obama “to stop” this “state-sponsored racism.”

From the start of Barack Obama's tenure in the White House, FIRM welcomed the President as an ally and placed its full support behind his political agenda, which Bhargava termed a “stealthy” strategy composed of two complementary prongs: (a) “not leading with issues of poverty or racial justice,” and (b) pushing for progressive change in the “back rooms” of Washington. FIRM has supported Obama’s efforts to package immigration reform as an economic necessity:

“The President was ... right in saying that immigration reform is a vital component of our economic recovery. Studies have shown that comprehensive immigration reform will add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy, drive up wages for all workers and support nearly a million jobs.”

Following the Saul Alinsky model of social-change activism championed by CCC luminaries like Heather Booth, FIRM funnels a large portion of its financial resources into activist training programs. Many of its top trainers are prominent figures serving in prestigious and powerful positions. Three of them -- Marshall Ganz, Michele Rudy, and Jake Waxman -- work at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Another FIRM trainer, Joy Cushman, serves as the Organizing Director at the New Organizing Institute. She also worked as a coordinator for the Obama Organizing Fellows Program, and as a trainer and Deputy Field Director in several states during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

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