Internet based group called the Latino Issues Forum, established in 1987, who focus on policy and research analysis in the following areas: Latinos & Sustainable Development (A Crisis in Equity, Participation, and Access), Health Access, Citizenship, Higher Education, and Telecommunications. Another very interesting Internet based group called Micasa-Sucasa, is a communication center managed by regular citizens concerned with the devastating effect that immigration laws have on thousands of people. It has a place where people can either tell their own stories, or read about others stories or feelings about immigration constraints and laws. Visitors to this site not only have access to stories, but can also contact each other, their respective Congressional lawmakers, and also have links to on and offline books, articles, and reports about immigration legislation and its development. The NCLR, or National Council for La Raza, has conducted immigration policy analysis and advocacy activities in what it feels is its role as a civil rights organization for numerous years. MALDEF, or the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is a national non profit organization whose mission is to protect and promote the civil rights of the millions of Latinos living in the United States, and has been doing so for over thirty years. These are just a few of the hundreds of organizations that have been established over the years, many of which have been united in the idea of equal citizenship rights for Mexican immigrants as well as Mexican Americans since the first National Chicano / Latino Conference on Immigration and Public Policy in October of 1977. The conference was sparked by then President Jimmy Carters immigration reform legislation which imposed legal sanctions against habitual employers of illegal aliens, and extended legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens in the United States. This somehow began to open...
