AILA Honor Anthony Lewis with First Annual Media Award
November 30, 2000
Matt
Tallmer Immigration
Lawyers Honor Anthony Lewis
WASHINGTON, D.C. ¾
New York
Times Anthony Lewis will receive the first annual American
Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Media Award at a ceremony in New York
City on December 11. The award is given to a member of the media who, over the
past year, has raised both the public’s awareness about pressing immigration
issues and the profile of immigration and immigrants as central to our
nation’s identity, and has promoted positive changes to our laws.
“There are few people who more
rightly deserve this award,” said Margaret A. Catillaz, AILA’s president.
“In his writings, Anthony Lewis has been a consistent opponent of the overly
harsh 1996 immigration laws. He has brought the issues of retroactivity,
indefinite detention, secret evidence and INS raids to the attention of the
American people by detailing how these laws have impacted real people. Mr. Lewis
has forced Members of Congress, including the very people who sponsored and
voted for these overly harsh statutes, to confront the human pain these laws
have caused.”
For example, Catillaz noted that
Lewis has written extensively about people such as Mary Anne Gehris, the woman
threatened with deportation because she pulled someone’s hair more than a
decade ago; Hany Kiraldeen and others held in detention because of secret
evidence; and Amando Baptiste, an immigrant from Cape Verde who created model
anti-gang program copied nationwide, but who is being deported for offenses
committed when he was a teenager.
“In addition to putting a
human face on the victims of these draconian provisions, Mr. Lewis also has
confronted in print the political leaders who introduced, supported and voted
for these laws,” Catillaz said. “Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Lewis has
done so with a sword encased in a silver pen. That is why we are presenting him
with our first annual Media Award.”
The Media Awards ceremony will
be held at Noon on Monday, December 11 at the New York Marriot World Trade
Center Hotel. For more information,
or if you wish to attend, contact Matt Tallmer, AILA’s public affairs manager
(202-216-2404).
-30-
38me0187
202-216-2404;
Fax:
202-371-9449
mtallmer@aila.org