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Republicans weaponize "Amnesty"

Op-Ed: Republicans weaponized ‘amnesty’ to make undocumented immigrants suffer.

By LAWRENCE DOWNES

MAY 28, 20203 AM UPDATED 3 AM

The scene in the TV ad: a football locker room. A man walks toward the camera, looking us dead in the eye. His name is Tommy Tuberville. He is a Republican, a former football coach, running for the United States Senate in Alabama. He makes three promises.

“We’ll drain the swamp,” he says. “Build the wall. No amnesty, ever.”

I can understand “drain the swamp” and “build the wall” — Coach Tuberville has borrowed Donald Trump’s MAGA chorus. But “no amnesty”?

Was anyone talking about amnesty? We are more than three years into the Trump regime, and anything resembling amnesty for undocumented immigrants is so far out of the picture we can scarcely remember it. Congress last considered large-scale legalization schemes under the last president and the one before that. Those were so loaded with conditions, so onerous and unforgiving, that calling them “amnesty” was a partisan stretch. They all failed.

America has moved on from arguing about unauthorized immigrants to brutalizing them, as a matter of federal policy. The Trump administration has raided their homes and workplaces, hunted them down at the border, abused and neglected them in custody and prosecuted people who tried to rescue them in the desert. Tens of thousands of immigrants are trapped in a vast detention archipelago, and many are now exposed to the deadly coronavirus. Parents have been forced to choose between being detained indefinitely or giving their children up.

Under the cover of the pandemic, immigration and asylum laws are being ignored. And any form of federal aid is off-limits to undocumented immigrants — even those risking their lives as essential workers to keep others safe, fed and healthy during the crisis.

So, amnesty?

It takes a particular kind of perversity for Republican politicians to be flogging that word — and variants like “bailout” and “handout” — at a time when immigrants are struggling just to stay alive. This month, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas introduced the No Bailouts for Illegal Immigrants Act, which blocks funding to states or municipalities that give stimulus checks to undocumented immigrants.

Coach Tuberville would call it running up the score. It is merciless.

All this comes out of a playbook that redefines “amnesty” to mean anything that might make life more secure or less miserable for the undocumented. Under this definition, the deferred-deportation DACA program for young immigrants, now before the Supreme Court, is amnesty. A farmworker bill is amnesty. The latest Democratic stimulus bill is amnesty, because it temporarily protects immigrants in essential industries from deportation and allows them to receive pandemic relief. For similar reasons, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to slip a little disaster cash to undocumented Californians would be considered amnesty.

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thanks to Latino Rebels for finding this video.