With the future of health care reform still uncertain, faith-based groups are hoping to jump-start a movement for the "other" reform package facing Congress -- an immigration overhaul that has stalled despite President Obama's promise to push it forward this year. In a conference call with reporters this week, representatives of a range of religious groups were joined by two members of Congress to unveil a month-long campaign that will begin by delivering thousands of postcards to Capitol Hill offices, continue with some 100 events across the country during the President's Day recess and into early March, and culminate with a large immigration reform rally in Washington on Sunday, March 21.

Faith leaders ranging from evangelical to Jewish came together Wednesday to launch a nationwide mobilization of people of faith to call for immigration reform that does not tear families apart. Already the "Together, Not Torn: Families Can't Wait for Immigration Reform" campaign has collected over 100,000 pro-reform postcards that will be delivered to members of Congress next week. Organizers anticipate they will collect more than a million postcards within the next month.

President Obama suspended the deportation of illegal Haitian immigrants living in the United States almost immediately following the earthquake that leveled Haiti last month. That compassionate decision was followed quickly by the announcement of a new immigration program granting temporary protective status to up to 200,000 Haitians. This has drawn some criticism from those who misunderstand its purpose and effect.

Last night, President Obama spoke for seventy minutes on the State of our Union. About two of those minutes focused on one of the greatest challenges facing it. The President talked of health care and jobs and our economy. That was the right thing to do. But the President must acknowledge that fixing our economy, providing health care, putting people back to work and moving America forward cannot be separated from fixing our broken immigration system.

Marie Violande Guerrier-Cavalier arrived in Florida from Haiti on Jan. 16, with little more than her feverish infant son, Marcley, his tiny legs in casts because of a birth defect. She left her husband and four other children behind, living in the yard outside their broken house. Because Marcley is a United States citizen, born here, his mother was allowed to evacuate with him after the earthquake, and can stay in the United States for six months.

Reporting from Grand Island, Neb. - Hawa Farah was living in Minneapolis three years ago making $8 an hour at a bakery when her fiance, Hussein Hussein, got a call about good jobs that paid better. So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to Nebraska, state slogan: "The Good Life."

In coming weeks, the Most Rev. Placido Rodriguez, Bishop of the Diocese of Lubbock, will ask local Catholics to join a national effort with ties to his own life: immigration. Catholic church leaders across the country are asking parishioners to send a message to Congress urging immigration reform. Pastors will distribute pre-written postcards and ask parishioners to mail them to their members of Congress.

A coalition of top religious leaders, including Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, on Monday urged the heads of local congregations and synagogues to help persuade their faithful to support a push for comprehensive immigration reform. The more than 400 Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Jewish leaders who attended the interfaith service and conference at Houston's St. Paul United Methodist Church seemed receptive to the call to overhaul the nation's immigration system and legalize the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

As the Catholic Church observed National Migration Week Jan. 3-9, support for legislative efforts took the forefront amid various other steps to bring attention to the concerns of migrants and refugees. In a teleconference Jan. 6, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration, described several steps being undertaken by the U.S. bishops, including a new Web site, a nationwide action alert and a previously announced postcard campaign to encourage members of Congress to support comprehensive reform. The Web site is a revamped version of www.justiceforimmigrants.org.