Too often, discussions about Comprehensive Immigration Reform fail to acknowledge the important economic contributions of the more than 18.9 million foreign-born women currently residing and working in the United States.

Just as their contributions are often invisible, so too is the more unsettling side of immigrant women's experience in America. Immigrant women are among the most at risk of poverty, employer exploitation, sexual abuse and family violence.

Seemingly gender-neutral immigration laws are having a particularly harmful impact on immigrant women:

* In a family-based immigration system rife with backlogs, women are left languishing for years in undocumented immigration status, foreclosing their ability to live and work separate from their spouses.

* Increased immigration enforcement separates immigrant mothers from their children, places mothers in electronic shackles and actually increases immigrant women's vulnerability by giving abusive employers and spouses the ability to threaten victims with family separation, detainment and deportation.

* When bureaucratic delays preclude access to legal work authorization, immigrant women suffer as they are forced to work for poverty-level wages or with unscrupulous employers just to make ends meet.

Join Legal Momentum for an informative discussion about improving immigration policies and how Comprehensive Immigration Reform can effectively respond to the needs of immigrant women and their families.

For more information or to RSVP, please visit http://www.legalmomentum.org/get-involved/out-of-the-shadows.html