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Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Los Angeles this Saturday to remind President Barack Obama of his promise to deliver comprehensive legislation on immigration. During his election campaign, the President vowed to move on the issue of reform within the first year of his tenure. In effort to pressure the White House while reviving the momentum of the immigrant rights movement, the March for Fair and Comprehensive Immigration Reform promised a spirit of unity heading into a single mobilization in the city scheduled for May 1st. The LA protests followed a larger demonstration in Washington, D.C. earlier this month that attracted more than 200,000 people. President Obama, in a videotaped message, assured marchers in the nation’s capital that he would work on forming a bipartisan consensus on immigration reform this year to the best of his abilities. Though inaction has characterized the D.C. political establishment’s response so far, a new joint study by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center highlights the positive economic benefits that await reform. The two organizations have found that fixing the broken immigration system would add 1.5 trillion dollars to the nation’s GDP over ten years, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs through new consumer spending, and add nearly one billion dollars in tax revenues.

GUEST: Gebe Martinez, Senior Writer and Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress, Xiomara Corpeno, Director of Organizing and Membership with CHIRLA

For more information, visit www.americanprogress.org and www.chirla.org.