Iowa forum organizers hope for honest conversation on immigration

DES MOINES - Immigration policy is not just a campaign issue, it is an Iowa issue, reform advocates say.

And those advocates want to have a conversation on the subject.

A panel of immigrant, business, political and spiritual leaders - plus Democratic presidential candidates Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee - will discuss the topic this weekend at the Unite Iowa Forum on Immigration on the Buena Vista University campus in Storm Lake.

Some of the participants spoke with reporters on a conference call Tuesday.

'We want to have a quality conversation, a quality discussion among Iowans on a broad spectrum of views on immigration,” said Des Moines Register columnist Kyle Munson, who will facilitate the event.

Immigration reform, in particular how to address the millions of people living in the country who came here illegally, has been a dominant issue in the presidential campaign and frequently discussed by candidates during their trips to Iowa leading up to the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

But immigration also is a local issue, advocates said Tuesday.

Munson noted immigration is a critical issue for agriculture, with many immigrants - some of whom came illegally - working in that sector.

Others said the immigrant population continues to grow in Iowa. Brad Best, a political science professor at Buena Vista University, said a quarter of the Des Moines school district's enrollment is Latino, and immigrant communities are growing in many small towns, even becoming the majority in some.

Monica Reyes, who co-founded the immigration reform advocacy group Dream Iowa, said the number of Latino families grew dramatically in the rural northeast Iowa town where she grew up.

'Most of the people I went to high school with, they got out of that small town and they never went back. Unfortunately, you see that all across Iowa,” said Reyes, a deferred action recipient and senior at the University of Northern Iowa. 'The depleting white populations (in those towns) are now being revived with the Latino populations coming in.”

Munson said Saturday's event will feature a robust discussion on immigration policy, including, for example, viewpoints from those who have talked about the need to secure the nation's border to slow the rate of illegal immigration.

Among the scheduled panelists are Reyes, Best, conservative politician and radio host Sam Clovis, Musco Lighting CEO Joe Crookham and Storm Lake pastor Charles Valenti-Hein.

A second portion of the event will feature a discussion with presidential candidates O'Malley and Chafee. Organizers said they invited all of the 20-plus presidential candidates.

'Immigration is a very, very important in Iowa, and it is an especially important question in Buena Vista County and in the Storm Lake community, where a very large percentage of residents in Storm Lake are immigrants of either first- or second-generation status,” Best said.

He said more than half of Storm Lake's public-school students are English language learners.