Raúl Grijalva began his career in public service as a community organizer in Tucson. Four decades later, he continues to be an advocate for those in need and a voice for the constituents of his home community. From 1974 to 1986, Raúl served on the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, including six years as Chairman. In 1988, he was elected to the Pima County Board of Supervisors, where he served for the next 15 years, chairing the Board for two of those years. Raúl resigned his seat on the Board of Supervisors in 2002 to seek office in Arizona’s newly created Seventh Congressional District. Despite a nine-candidate primary and the challenge of being outspent three-to-one by his closest competitor, Raúl was elected with a 20-point victory, thanks to a diverse coalition of supporters that led the largest volunteer-driven election effort in Arizona.
I believe that our diversity as a country is our greatest strength. Our very identity as a nation is rooted in our immigrant heritage, and immigrants are critical to both the cultural and economic vibrancy of our country. That’s why I am fighting for a process that keeps families together, provides refuge to the world’s most vulnerable populations, and attracts the world’s best talents to live, study, and work in the U.S. Instead of building walls, we should be prioritizing border management and efforts that modernize and expand our nation’s land POEs, which are vital to both ensuring the safety of our country as well as facilitating the flow trade. We must also stop the wasteful spending on a border wall that has devastated precious environmental habitats, militarized border communities, and destroyed sacred Native American cultural sites.