Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Trump Seeks to Use Dreamers as Bargaining Chips Against Immigrant Communities

Response to a Truth Challenged President
In the State of the Union, President Trump claims to offer a “down the middle compromise” on immigration.   It is not.  Instead  Trump  continues his attack on immigrants in the United States with his administration’s latest immigration plan. Rather than dealing humanely with the current crisis of immigration, the Trump Administration proposes to waste some 25 Billion dollars of taxpayer money to further militarize border communities by building walls and deploying more federal agents to immigrant communities across the nation. The changes in immigration law proposed by the Trump administration will not benefit  our people. They will only devastate communities while pleasing a few white nationalists.  

In his speech he repeats his proposed framework  as a compromise for revising immigration law. They demand 25 billion dollars for the border wall, more personnel for ICE, and an increased authority to deport immigrants. This proposal differs from prior plans released by the White House because the Republican administration included a provision that would grant legal status to 1.8 million immigrants, including DACA recipients. In exchange, the Republican White House expects to gain the resources and authorization to terrorize the 9.2 million immigrants who will not receive legal status.  The Trump administration’s immigration agenda is deplorable and unacceptable.
The White House framework is  another version of the list of demands they released October 2017. Those demands include deporting children seeking asylum, easing the requirements for deportations, expanding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) authority, allowing state governments to enforce immigration laws and protecting those state governments from being sued after deporting and detaining immigrants.   Republican Congressmen justify these brutal proposals by saying that they are necessary for national security, including the need to fight gangs like MS-13. They further justify their proposals for mass deportations by saying that those who became refugees in this country did so by abusing loopholes.

 These measures will not make the U.S. safer. What they will do is drastically militarize our society. The border itself will be more heavily patrolled; the Trump administration wants to add 5,000 Border Patrol agents .  With this many more agents, the Border Patrol would be roughly 24,000 agents strong. These agents will be unleashed on immigrant communities, where they will do tremendous harm.  A 2014 study of the Border Patrol called “No Action Taken,” written by the American Immigration Council, found that 97 percent of complaints against agents resulted in no punishment for the agent (Martinez, Cantor, and Ewing 2014). These sorts of abuses will also happen in cities and communities away from the border as  the Republican administration demands that 10,000 additional ICE officers be hired.

The demand that local law enforcement be included in immigration enforcement is also alarming.  The administration proposes to incentivize local governments to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government. Texas and at least twenty-three other Republican led states and numerous cities already have cooperated to establish such a repressive environment.   Their most worrying demand is that local law enforcement be granted the same immunity from oversight and prosecution afforded to federal law enforcement in immigration matters.
Past use of aggressive interior enforcement, then called “Secure Communities,” was a failure. ICE agents conducted raids and arrested people at work sites, schools, and on the streets.  Often they jailed complete families.   The campaigns deported parents of U.S. citizens, leaving the children behind, disrupting families, schools, and workplaces. The raids and the incarceration were too often done without proper warrants and normal procedural safeguards.

The proposed major increase in enforcement efforts will shatter communities across this country by making it too risky for many immigrants to engage with civil society.  If law enforcement is seen as collaborating with ICE, contact with the police, already extremely dangerous, will be avoided by immigrants. When local police cooperate with ICE it is difficult to establish trust between immigrant communities and the law.  To prevent this loss of trust, California and more than 200 cities and counties have declared themselves as sanctuaries from such aggressive enforcement tactics.
The Trump Administration proposes to withhold federal funds from sanctuary localities. If the administration gains the right to cancel grants to sanctuary cities as part of the budget negotiations, public safety in many communities will be severely harmed.  
Instead of following the Republican administration’s framework, Congress should reform immigration with the goal of making it possible for our  immigrant communities to participate in wider society. Hundreds of thousands of people received a precarious legal status based upon Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Already, the Trump administration has refused to renew TPS status for immigrants from Haiti and El Salvador. Those who have some protection because of TPS should be granted permanent legal status and ultimately a path to citizenship. Refugees and immigrants who came to this country as minors must be granted permanent residence and a path to citizenship.
 A clean DREAM act is needed.  Such a bill would grant legal status to people who immigrated to the United States as children without adding the  allocation of  funding for agencies like ICE or a border wall.  Imigrants  families  must not be separated.  What the Republican administration calls “chain migration” is the current law on family preferences.  Family-based immigration sponsorship should be maintained.  The Republican administration claims it wants to maintain the nuclear family, but it plans to tear families apart with its vicious changes to the family sponsorship laws. More on family sponsored immigration can be found in this piece[M3] [CD4] .
Comprehensive immigration reform should also include a radical change in how immigration laws are enforced.  ICE and the Border Patrol have proven themselves incapable of fighting organized crime. The Border Patrol has added 15,000 agents to its force since 1990 but has still failed to stop organized crime along the border. Instead, they have primarily succeeded in terrorizing peaceful immigrants, many who came to the U.S. to flee violent conditions in their home country created or exacerbated by U.S. foreign policy.  Allocating the proposed 25 billion dollars, 7 billion more than they demanded last time, for a wall and an enlarged Border Patrol will only result in the death of many innocent people.  Rather than wasting money on a wall, this same 25 billion dollars could pay for 960 new schools, or 625 new hospitals and clinics in the border region and other low income underserved communities or to rebuild homes, hospitals, and schools in flooded areas of Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

Immigration reform is clearly needed. Dreamers and TPS recipients need their legal status maintained and millions more need legal protection. Legalizing 1.8 million people, while deporting 9.2 million others, is unacceptable. This barbarous act will destroy countless lives, including the lives of those who stand to gain legal status from this proposal. Some will be allowed to stay in the United States and watch their neighbors and family members be deported. By combining policies that increase deportations and restrict family sponsorships to a DACA fix, the Trump administration  is using the Dreamers as pawns in their legislative  attack on immigrant communities.    It should be possible for those millions of immigrants working in this country to gain a route to legalization and citizenship.   The demands of the Trump White House must not be included in any immigration reform bill.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and unions must work with other progressives to defeat the white nationalist agenda of the Trump administration.

DSA Immigrants’ Rights Committee
Duane Campbell
Brandon Rey Ramirez, Co chairs.
dsa.immigration@gmail.com








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