WASHINGTON -- On January 20, hundreds of thousands of people will welcome a new president and his administration as Barack Obama takes his official post in the White House.

The next day-- his first full day on the job--could also be eventful.

Immigration policy groups announced Tuesday that they will organize a mass mobilization of immigrant families and supporters in Washington, on Jan. 21, 2009, in part to welcome the Democratic president, but also to also ensure that humane immigration reform is at the top of his agenda.

The National Capital Immigrant Coalition and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement—the two groups responsible for the nationwide allies in 2006—announced plans for the rally at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

“This massive mobilization will draw thousands of immigrant families and supporters,” said Jessica Alvarez, the coalition president. “It will celebrate a new day for America, a new hope for our community. The immigrant community found its voice, its place in this election and we helped elect someone who represents our hopes and our dreams.”

“And we will be here on January 21, on the first day of the new administration’s job,” Alvarez said.

About 40 immigrant community leaders, representing various ethnicities, vowed to join forces to carry out the demonstration, which they predicted would draw in the tens of thousands. The 2006 rallies, based on a “Day Without Immigrants” theme, drew millions in states across the nation. But the following year, the U.S. Senate reached a stalemate and scrapped immigration reform legislation.

Calling on Obama to make good on the promises for more humane immigration policies that drew record numbers of immigrants to the polls last week, the organizers said the president-elect’s work with immigrants is far from over. They particularly want him to uphold a promise to reverse a deportation-only approach to illegal immigration, and focus on developing policies that would keep families together.

“We need to transform the election momentum into policy change momentum,” said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

Some of the advocates proposed changes called for Obama to call a moratorium on raids and to use his administrative power to reverse existing Bush policies, such as a rule which penalizes employers that hire immigrants with unverifiable Social Security numbers.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration reform, an anti-illegal immigration group, said the federation had no plans to press Obama about immigration just yet because of more pressing crises facing the country.

Mehlman said the group did its own exit polling to see how important enforcement of border security was to legal immigrants—primarily Hispanic voters, a group that voted 66 percent for Obama..

“The data that came out of the polling was that Obama was not elected by immigrants to grant amnesty to illegal aliens, it was primarily …confidence in him to fix the economy,” Mehlman said.

“There are all kinds of things that [Obama] is going to be tied up with,” Mehlman added. “When he does address this issue, we will be ready.”