As you are painfully aware, the damage Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois continues to inflict on a specific set of immigrants is severe and there are now deep wounds that he is unwilling to acknowledge. It is an undeniable fact that 1.5 million skilled immigrants and their families are victims of systemic racism by Dick Durbin. Unlike some of the other issues of racism we are now confronting, in this situation, there is one clear aggressor who is intent on denying us equality - Senator Dick Durbin.

There is a long and consistent record of Dick Durbin’s passive aggression towards brown-skinned Indian immigrants. Among other things:

• Durbin has consistently, systematically and year after year excluded our children from his Dream Act even though he is well aware that they will "age out" at 21 and have to leave the country in which they grew up.

• Durbin has singled out and specifically attacked skilled immigrants from India for many years by calling every such immigrant a “cheap IT worker” even when a lot of these immigrants are researchers, dentists, physical therapists, professors, biologists, psychologists and a host of diverse professions that require extensive training and experience.

• Durbin has put a hold on the Fairness bill, refusing to allow equal treatment for brown-skilled immigrants from India, unless unlimited green cards are made available.

• Durbin was a cosponsor of the Fairness bill when it contained special visas for Irish nationals. Since such special provisions are not a part of the current bill, he is refusing to let it pass, as he despises Indian immigrants and does not want to help us.

It is the oldest trick in the book for the racist, to put a label on a group of people so they can be persecuted. Senate Dick Durbin consistently refers to immigrants from India as “cheap IT labor” even when there are sufficient data and studies to show that immigrants from India are paid more than every other class of immigrants. However, that has not stopped Dick Durbin from using labels to denigrate immigrants from India. Although different in magnitude, to illustrate the point, for centuries, our African American brothers and sisters were also labeled with the N-word, to somehow justify the persecution of our African-American brothers and sisters. Our situation is not much different when people like Dick Durbin try to put such labels on us.

Now, what should we do about people like Dick Durbin? How do we respond to someone who continues to hold our bill since last year and wants to kill it so each one of the immigrants and their families is kicked out? How do you respond to such hate and passive violence? In the absence of any humanity, what do we do about someone who hates us so much that even in the face of the global pandemic, he would not even consider the slightest relief to the families? All of these are legitimate questions.

Either towards the end of this week or sometime soon, the administration is expected to issue an Interim Final Regulation (IFR). This IFR will impose new restrictions on immigrants stuck in the backlogs for many years, and now such immigrants could be at risk of being kicked out. All this because Dick Durbin would not let the Fairness bill pass.

Collectively, we have all come very far in getting our bill done. Now we all have this responsibility to ourselves and our families to do everything we can to get our bill over the finish line. If Senator Durbin is going to block our bill, because of his outdated racist ethnocentric beliefs, let him do it in broad daylight and own his decisions. But we must not be afraid to speak truth to power, to show light to the darkness. In the words of Robert Frost, ‘The best way out is always through’. Let posterity be the judge of how Dick Durbin single-handed persecuted 1.5 million immigrants from India because he did not like the color of their skin.

Therefore, to show light to Dick Durbin’s hate and to advocate for our bill, S.386 - The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, we have started running television advertisements on CNN, MSNBC, and other channels in different locations around the country to tell the truth about the bill. There is no principle more powerful than equality. And we need to create awareness that the bill treats immigrants equally, rather than discriminating against immigrants on immutable characteristics like country of their birth or color of their skin.

We want to run thousands of ads like this - every month - for many months and expand the reach of these ads to every corner of the country - over television, radio and newspapers - so American people are more aware of the issue and the people of Illinois will know exactly the kind of hypocrite representing them in the Senate.

We want to create and run ads telling the stories of the men and women who died in racist green card lines, leaving behind bereaved spouses who are forced to uproot and leave, the children who will have to self-deport, the lives spent in frustration and indentured servitude - all because of racist Senator Dick Durbin is telling us our #HomeisNOTHere.

We believe this requires a budget of $100,000/month (one hundred thousand dollars a month) to have the desired effect. Even though times are hard in this pandemic, please show your resolve to getting recognized as an equal human being by signing up for a monthly contribution at a level you are comfortable with. If you could commit to contributing just $100/month towards this effort, we can make these advertisements happen.

To support this effort, please visit donations.immigrationvoice.org and start a recurring contribution at a level you are comfortable with. We also have a live tracker for you to track our progress in reaching our donation target.

Let’s collectively follow the path laid down by great activist Maggie Kuhn, who said that “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes”.