Why do we need immigration reform?

While other issues are sweeping the headlines, some agenda items remain a top concern.

Why do we need immigration reform?

KMIR-6 Palm Springs, CA news clip: Like most days, Anna Leiva comes straight home after school, but instead of hanging out with friends or doing typical teen things, these days she's doing the cooking, paying the bills, helping her younger cousins with their homework, and then going to work herself. That's because Anna's mother and aunt were taken away by INS agents in the middle of the night last week for being undocumented immigrants. Anna knows many people won't have sympathy for her family's ordeal seeing the issue as simply that you're legal or illegal.

Anna Leiva: "No. It's not that simple. I mean, I might not understand about politics or everything that's going on, but it's not that simple. There's families who are being split up, little kids who are being left without their parents, without their Mom."

We want to belong and contribute.

Ana Cubas, Dreams Across America: "My mama asked me, 'mi hija, what do you want for your 18th birthday?' and I said to her, you know, I didn't say I wanted a car or fancy clothes, I said, you know Mom, I want to become a U.S. citizen so that I can vote. And so we got into the process of becoming citizens, and I remember voting for the first time after that when I was 18."

Arianna Hurrington, Huffington Post: "America is a nation of immigrants, and you cannot imagine America separate from the whole story of immigration into this country, because that was the birth of this country."

We know it's hard to understand.

Andrew Ea, University of Notre Dame: "People make decisions, and I've heard people give really strong statements despite not understanding it. They just can't see like through the eyes of people that haven't been living here in this country where life is just so great. They can't understand, like, the kinds of people that just have the quality of life that is just unimaginable."

Rosa Lopez, University of Notre Dame: "One reason I want to be in college is just to educate myself and be able to make an argument intelligently and not necessarily with emotion, but I feel like with the immigration issue in general, the human issues are constantly lost by those that oppose it."

But we cannot wait.