Let us be
clear. The shut down of the U.S.
government was due to a dispute over spending because Donald Trump ordered the end of the
DACA program ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). The spending bill assumes the end of
DACA and demands a vast increase in spending on the border, including a wall. At present the critical issue is restoring DACA. Note: restoring. We had a DACA program that protected the
lives of some 800,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children. Trump created this crisis and the Republicans
are using the crisis to promote their anti immigrant agenda.
Since his campaign, Trump has
doubled down on racism, sexism and bigotry, to the delight of David Duke, the
American Nazi Party, and others like them. The control of the Republican Party
by hard core anti immigration forces emboldens hard-core racists, Islamophobes,
misogynists, and anti-immigrant groups, while promising an assault on workers'
rights.
The White House has
demanded that an increase of 33 billion dollars in funding for anti-immigrant
measures be included as a part of the DREAM act. 18 Billion dollars of this
funding increase would be spent on the border wall and the rest on terrorizing
immigrant communities in this country.
As the Southern Border Communities Coalition
says, “The Administration’s misguided
and outlandish proposal would waste $33 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to
further militarize border communities, by building walls and deploying more
federal agents. This funding request is an affront to the 15 million people who
call the borderlands home . The funding proposal further
fails to address border residents’ true needs including oversight and
accountability for abusive Customs and Border Protection personnel.
Increasing the number of agents would have little to no impact on security and
would be fiscally irresponsible and unwarranted.”
The demands of the
Republican anti immigration forces include more deportations, punishments for
cities that protect their immigrants with sanctuary laws, and an increase
in ICE’s budget.
These demands are
unacceptable. If Trump’s version of the DREAM act passes, immigrants in this
country will face arbitrary harassment by hostile federal agencies. Trump claims that this violence is necessary in
order to fight terrorism and drug cartels. These threats used to justify their
draconian demands are either imaginary or exacerbated by our deportation
policy.
Trump also claim that they want additional measures
to punish those who use what the administration calls loopholes in our
immigration laws including the preferences for family unification. He calls this chain migration. Removing these “loopholes” would uproot
thousands of people who know no other home, many of whom are children. Congress
must instead pass a clean DREAM act. Anything else will wreck countless lives
on both sides of the border."
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