Hundreds of migrants have gathered to walk 40 miles, marking the nearly 40 years since the U.S. passed meaningful immigration reform. Starting Saturday morning, two groups will begin their treks from San Jose and Petaluma in Northern California, arriving at the San Francisco Federal Building Monday afternoon.

What You Need To Know

  • Hundreds of migrants will walk 40 miles to mark the nearly 40 years since the U.S. passed meaningful immigration reform

  • The "All In for Registry" walks begins in San Jose and Petalauma in Northern California Saturday morning and ends at the Federal Building in San Francisco Monday afternoon

  • Organizers are trying to call attention to the Registry Bill, which would allow about 8 million undocumented immigrants to apply for permanent residency

  • Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate introduced the bill this year

“Our members believe we needed to do something more dramatic this year because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have been convinced of the human rights urgency that exists within our undocumented community,” Northern California Coalition for Just Immigration Reform spokesperson Renee Saucedo told Spectrum News.

The "All In for Registry" walk is intended to urge Congress to pass the Registry Bill, which House Democrats introduced earlier this year to update the 1929 Immigration Act and make more immigrants eligible to apply for permanent resident status.

The bill would update federal law to create a process for undocumented immigrants to apply for a green card as long as they have lived in the United States continuously for at least seven years. When the Immigration Act was first passed in 1929, immigrants needed to prove they had arrived in the U.S. before 1921 to be eligible. While that cutoff date has been updated over the subsequent decades, the last time was in 1986, when the cutoff date was moved to Jan. 1, 1972.

“If we go beyond 40 years without a path-to-citizenship law, millions of people and the people who care about them will continue to be devastatingly impacted,” Saucedo said.

Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center. Of those, about 8 million would be eligible to apply for permanent residency under the new Registry Bill.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introduced a similar bill in the Senate in July. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., were co-sponsors. 

Saucedo said that without immigration reform, illegal immigrants are unable to travel and see loved ones and will continue to be exploited in the workplace with unfair wages and discrimination. They will also continue to lack access to aid and benefits enjoyed by U.S. citizens.

“Through our walk, we will build community power. We will build political power,” Saucedo said. “We are walking so that people will give us the respect that we deserve. We’re walking because human beings deserve to live with dignity.”

Organizers of the "All In for Registry" walk have arranged for medics to accompany the immigrants as they trek along a route that is forecast to be hot and sunny. Saucedo said many of this weekend's participants are hoping the long walk through extreme heat will call attention to the types of conditions they already endure as undocumented farm hands, housecleaners and construction workers.

Efforts to update immigration law in the United States have not been successful despite multiple attempts. In 2021, the House considered the Farm Workforce Modernization Act to create a path to legal status for some undocumented farm workers, as well as the American Dream and Promise Act to provide undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors protection from deportation and a chance to obtain permanent legal status.

Both bills failed in the Senate.

The coalition of immigrant rights groups participating in this weekend’s walk are “pushing for fair immigration reform policies that impact the broadest number of undocumented and which do not include the bad policies which cause more suffering,” Saucedo said.

She cited E-Verify programs that compare an employee’s I-9 Citizenship and Immigration form with Department of Homeland Security records and the expansion of guest worker programs as examples of bad policy that exploit and criminalize migrants.

This weekend’s walk comes as several GOP presidential candidates are pushing agendas first implemented under President Trump. Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., visited Yuma, Ariz., Friday, where he reiterated his intent to finish building the border wall that former President Trump began President Biden ended. He is also seeking to reinstate Title 42 — the public health directive enacted during the pandemic that expelled migrants back to Mexico. That policy ended in May.

While arrests at the southern border have declined 70% since Title 42’s end, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 99,545 encounters between ports of entry along the Southwest border in June.