When President Bush was elected to office in 2000, the possibilities of immigration reform began to take shape. In 2001 meetings were scheduled between Bush and Mexican president Vicente Fox.

It was at this time that I decided to bring religious, labor and immigrant groups together to form a coalition to work on immigration reform. Because the Catholic Archdioses's Office of Social Justice (OSJ) founded the group and because I was willing to coordinate and work with our CCVC volunteer to coordinate, OSJ became the coordinating “home” for this effort.

Over the next six months, the group began to get organized and was dealt a hard blow when September 11, 2001 happened and hopes for immigration reform took a major hit. As a consequence the group decided to focus its efforts on congressional staffs and the Minnesota congressional delegation. We held a briefing for staff with attorneys from ILA in Washington, DC. Several other educational and media efforts were held to bring the issue of immigration back into the limelight.

At some point in that year, we began to call ourselves the MN Alliance for Federal Immigration Reform (MAFIR). The focus of the group was federal reform because an immigration committee working with the Urban Coalition provided a clearinghouse for state related immigration issues. We decided that we were more than a clearinghouse and that we would organize events as a group that strategically led to increased advocacy on federal immigration reform. We also developed the first set of principles.

During this period of time FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) was really getting organized throughout the country and south of the Twin Cities. Because of the growing strength of FAIR and the similarity between that name and MAFIR, we decided to change the name to AFFIRM because we affirmed the rights of immigrants and workers.

After the Immigrant Freedom Ride to Washington DC, more members of MAFIR/AFFIRM wanted to work on local immigration issues because of the distance to DC. While there was opposition to broadening the focus, ultimately the group did decided to go that route.

Then came Governor Pawlenty and Sensenbrenner….all of which gave AFFIRM more than a reason to exist and to increase its organizing efforts at both the state and federal levels.

Most people have the institutional memory from December 2005 until the present including the march in April of 2006.

- Kathy Tomlin, November 2008