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.
