Immigration Reform

 Immigration reform 

 

The truth is: Republicans in Congress want a broken immigration system. They want to campaign on the issue. They can’t win elections without it.

And Democrats shouldn’t play Republicans’ cynical game on immigration. 

Right-wing policies like Title 42, Remain in Mexico, and mass deportations do nothing to fix the issue – they only cause chaos in border communities and harm to immigrants and asylum seekers.

We need real reform to invest in our ports of entry, open up more legal pathways for migration, provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and address the root cause of migration—which is often the conditions in Latin America driving families to our border.

That is the kind of real immigration reform I’ll continue to fight for. I won’t abandon our nation’s values to score a cheap political win. I hope you’ll have my back in that fight.

Greg Casar 

U.S. Congress.  Texas

Major Loss on Immigration Reform

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/us/politics/immigration-citizenship.html

Democrats Dealt a Blow on Immigration Plans

The Senate’s parliamentarian ruled that Democrats’ plan to give 8 million immigrants a path to citizenship could not be achieved through the reconciliation process.

Members of United We Dream rallied near the White House in August to demand Congress deliver citizenship for millions of immigrants this year.Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock

WASHINGTON — The Senate parliamentarian dealt a major setback on Sunday to Democrats’ plan to use their $3.5 trillion social policy bill to create a path to citizenship for an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants.

250 + Organizations call for Sensible Immigration Reform

Including DSA. 
February 13, 2018
Dear Members of Congress:
We, the undersigned immigration, refugee, faith, education, youth, health, labor and civil liberties organizations write to express our commitment to securing permanent protections for Dreamers and call on Congress to pass the Dream Act without further delay.
Securing permanent protections for all Dreamers, including but not limited to those eligible for protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, must be the guiding light for senators in the week ahead; the American people overwhelmingly support a path to citizenship, not a kick-the-can-down-the-road temporary solution. Importantly, protecting Dreamers cannot come at the cost of harming other immigrants or immigrant communities, nor can it entail militarizing the border, keeping families apart, or undermining life-saving humanitarian protections.
President Trump ended DACA on September 5th, 2017. Since then more than 19,000 immigrant youth who put their full faith in the U.S. government have lost the ability to work, study, and live without fear of deportation; hundreds of thousands more will lose protections in the months ahead. Despite President Trump’s promise to support a “bill of love,” he has rejected multiple bipartisan efforts at compromise. And now, through the White House’s ‘Legislative Framework’ on immigration, he has instead doubled down on efforts to radically reshape the United States’ immigration policies and, in doing so, the face of America to the world.
Let’s be clear: The White House Framework would take the country backwards in an echo of restrictive policies not seen since the 1920s, while using the fate of Dreamers as bait. Congress must reject these nativist overtures. President Trump and Congressional Republicans created this moral crisis and it is up to them to work in good faith with Democrats to reach a narrow agreement that pairs a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers with smart and sensible border security measures.
Members of Congress must oppose efforts to hold Dreamers hostage in exchange for a nativist wish list. Anything that goes beyond the scope of the original agreement from last fall—namely, protecting Dreamers and making additional investments in reasonable border security—must be rejected.
Here are the issues which our organizations will not accept in any legislation:
Border Militarization: Trump’s Wall and Deportation Force
Congress must oppose efforts to expand President Trump’s mass deportation force and build his wall—a wasteful and unpopular policy that will only harm border communities—and must oppose ramping up enforcement actions against asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and immigrant communities across the country.

Paul Ryan- Republicans- Immigration Reform is Dead

WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan said in a series of televised interviews on Sunday that he would not work with the Obama administration on changing immigration policy, effectively pushing off the issue to at least 2017.

     “Look, I think it would be a ridiculous notion to try and work on an issue like this with a president we simply cannot trust on this issue,” Mr. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “He tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards.”

The message from Mr. Ryan, who was elected speaker on Thursday, signaled an antagonism toward the White House that both echoed his predecessor, John A. Boehner, and is likely to appeal to the party conservatives who forced Mr. Boehner’s resignation.

Mr. Ryan taped five Sunday morning news shows, in which he laid out his agenda for unifying his party and his approach to relationships with congressional colleagues, Mr. Obama and Republican presidential candidates.

Republicans Use Courts to Block DACA- DAPA

Republicans Use Courts to Block Immigration Reform - 4.7 million now subject to deportation. 

Michael D. Shear and Julia Preston.  New York Times. Oct.14, 2015.

WASHINGTON — The prime-time assertion of executive power was audacious and far-reaching. Nearly a year ago, President Obama vowed that his administration would provide up to four million undocumented immigrants the ability to live and work in the United States without fear of immediate deportation.

It almost certainly will not happen for the vast majority of them.

The conservative legal campaign against the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s immigration overhaul has largely succeeded in running out the clock, blocking the president’s executive actions from taking effect while judges consider their legality. Now, even if Mr. Obama ultimately prevails in the legal battle — which would occur next summer at the earliest — there will probably be time for at most a few hundred thousand of those immigrants to qualify for protection before the end of the president’s term.

Worse for the administration, in the next few weeks, the states fighting to stop Mr. Obama may score their biggest victory yet — achieving a long-enough delay in the lower courts to prevent the Supreme Court from even considering and ruling on the case until after next year’s presidential election. That timing would leave any final decision about immigration to Mr. Obama’s successor.

Republicans Vote to Repeal DACA, Block Immigration Reform

Republicans in House Vote to Repeal DACA- block Immigration Reform.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/us/politics/house-votes-to-revoke-legal-protections-for-millions-of-immigrants.html?_r=0

House Republicans seek to block Obama Immigration changes

WASHINGTON—House Republicans are set to vote next week on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security that will be coupled with a number of hard-line conservative measures going after President Barack Obama’s central immigration policies. The bill is likely to set up a weeks long fight between Republicans and the president that could risk shutting down DHS at the end of next month.

The $39.7 billion DHS funding package was introduced on Friday, and will be coupled next week with amendments limiting the president’s immigration authorities. One amendment is expected to block Obama’s recently announced executive actions on immigration, which could give work authorization to up to 5 million people who are in the country illegally. Members said the legislation would also halt the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which protects undocumented young people who came to the U.S. as children.

Along with those measures, members said the amendments would reinstate the controversial Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, which DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced would be ended late last year due to pushback from state and local officials. The package is also expected to do away with most of the “Morton Memos,” guidance from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that instructs agents to focus deportation efforts on immigrants who are perceived as more dangerous or who have recently crossed the border illegally.

What President Obama Told Latino DC About Immigration

Presidential speech on Immigration to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Oct. 2, 2014

Jilted Once More on the Promise of Immigration Reform

Jilted Once More on the Promise of Immigration Reform

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Jimmy Franco Sr.

President Obama has stated that any action on immigration reform either legislatively or through any type of executive action will once again be postponed until the end of the year. The official reason given for yet another postponement in regard to resolving this pressing issue are the upcoming mid-term elections and the need to get Democrats elected. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus was not even consulted nor informed of this decision by Obama before it went public. The real reason which Obama and other Democrats didn’t mention is the unprincipled need to distance themselves from the “taint” of immigration reform and  statements or actions that appear sympathetic to immigrants so as to not alienate xenophobic and anti-immigrant voters in the November elections. This political decision essentially confirmed that the priority for Obama’s Democrats is to cater to voters who are fervently opposed to immigrants and reform by not saying or doing anything that would harm their chauvinist “sensitivities” in order to win their votes. This so-called “pragmatic and Machiavellian” policy and action by the Democrats takes precedence in the real world over the political sensitivities of Latinos and the continuing harm being inflicted upon immigrants and their families due to a callous and broken immigration system. Immigration activists, their organizations and the eleven million undocumented persons within the country have been left standing alone at the altar holding a hollow Democratic proposal after having been jilted once again by the unfaithful suitor Obama with another one of his false promises. This political relationship between Obama’s Democrats and the Latino community resembles a deja vu scenario and is similar to an insincere groom once again making lame and repeated excuses to not show up at the church wedding in order to avoid making a final and decisive commitment which in this case is immigration reform.

Obama Delays Decision on Immigration

Policy on refugees has not changed. ( see post below)

WASHINGTON — President Obama will delay taking executive action on immigration until after the midterm elections, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who feared that acting now could doom his party’s chances this fall, White House officials said on Saturday. NY Times.

The decision is a reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to issue broad directives to overhaul the immigration system soon after summer’s end, and sparked swift anger from immigration advocates. The president made the promise on June 30, standing in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.

“Because of the Republicans’ extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections,” a White House official said. “Because he wants to do this in a way that’s sustainable, the president will take action on immigration before the end of the year.”

Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press.  9/6/2014.

WASHINGTON — Caught between competing political demands over immigration, President Barack Obama will now wait until after the November election to take executive action that could shield millions of immigrants from deportation and ignite a clash over the extent of his presidential authority.

Migrants flow into South Texas

Julia Preston. NYT. June 17, 2014.

McALLEN, Tex. — Exhausted and dazed, hundreds of Central American migrants, mainly women with small children, come to the bus station of this border city every day now, spilling into a church next door that has opened its doors. Having crossed into the United States illegally, the new arrivals are often grimy and famished. In the church, they eat, bathe and sleep, changing into donated shoes and clothes.

With no immigration detention site equipped for women with children in the area — the closest one, in Pennsylvania, is overbooked — they are freed by the Border Patrol with a bus ticket to travel to where they have relatives in this country, and an order to appear in immigration court in 30 days.

They are among at least 30,000 migrants released this year, border officials and federal lawmakers said, amid a surge of illegal crossings in the Rio Grande Valley.

Immigration Reform; Divisions on Strategy

by David Iaconangelo.  Latin Times 

The New York Times reports that on Tuesday, a group of pro-immigration reform groups including the Service Employees International Union and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops urged President Barack Obama to delay executive action on immigration enforcement until the August Congressional recess in order to give House Republicans time to act on legislation.  A day later, the administration said it was ordering Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson to hold off on final recommendations to the president on how immigration-enforcement policies could be made more “humane” – a task understood as preliminary to any potential executive action taken by Obama. 

Eliseo Medina, chief organizer with the SEIU, told the Times that the move would force the hand of Republicans in the House, saying that it would be “absolutely crystal clear for Latino and Asian voters that they blocked” immigration reform if the GOP did not act.  Democratic leaders in Congress have also gotten on board with that strategy; New York senator Chuck Schumer, a key proponent of reform and member of the eight-man bipartisan team that wrote last summer’s comprehensive Senate bill, said last Friday that Obama would have “no choice but to act on his own” if House Republicans refused to pass legislation. 

But some immigrant advocates express anger and impatience with the strategy as deportations of undocumented immigrants continue

The current status of farmworkers and the Chavez Legacy

Immigration Advocates Face Serious Challenges in Passing Reform in 2014

Eliseo Medina on Organizing for Immigration Reform

DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on...: DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on Fasting for Immigration Reform

DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on...

DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on...: DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on Fasting for Immigration Reform

DSA Honorary Chair, Labor Leader, Eliseo Medina on Fasting for Immigration Reform

Obama visits activists fasting for immigration reform

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama stopped by the National Mall on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, to speak with immigration reform activists who are fasting as part of an effort to push Congress to act on a path to citizenship for millions of the nation's undocumented immigrants.
"The President and the First Lady are visiting individuals taking part in Fast For Families on the National Mall and offer their support for those who are fasting on behalf of immigration reform," a White House official said, according to a pool report.

Activists have been fasting on the National Mall since Nov. 12 and have attracted several White House and Congressional leaders who have visited to show solidarity. The Obamas spoke with 18 day fasters and two activists who have been fasting for 18 days: Eliseo Medina (left) and Dae Joong Yoon (right), and thanked them for their "sacrifice and dedication."

Fast for Immigration Reform - Update

Pressure and Passivity on Immigration

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD.  NYTimes. November 27, 2013.

President Obama made the case for immigration reform again on Monday, in a speech in San Francisco that seemed mostly directed to Republicans in Congress, who aren’t listening. (See post below)

Noting the Republican resistance to passing a single comprehensive bill, he struck an oddly lighthearted note. “It’s Thanksgiving,” he said. “We can carve that bird into multiple pieces — a drumstick here, breast meat there.” This drew chuckles. By suggesting that large-scale immigration overhaul can be done incrementally, he was retreating from an argument that has guided reform advocates for a decade: fixing the broken system requires three things at once — tighter enforcement, an improved flow of new immigrants and legalization for the 11 million living here outside the law.

Barack Obama on Immigration Reform - November 25, 2013

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, everybody!  (Applause.)  Well, hello, San Francisco!    It is great to be back in California.  It is great to be with all of you.  I love San Francisco.      

And it’s fitting that we’re here in Chinatown, just a few miles away from Angel Island.  In the early 1900s, about 300,000 people -- maybe some of your ancestors -- passed through on their way to a new life in America.  And for many, it represented the end of a long and arduous journey -- they’d finally arrived in a place where they believed anything was possible.

And for some, it also represented the beginning of a new struggle against prejudice in a country that didn’t always treat its immigrants fairly or afford them the same rights as everybody else.  Obviously, Asians faced this, but so did the Irish; so did Italians; so did Jews; and many groups still do today.

Demands for Immigration Reform Produce Nonviolent Direct Action at Capitols

 Demands for Immigration Reform Produce Nonviolent Direct Action at the Capitol
Update.

At least eight Democratic lawmakers were arrested Tuesday at an immigration rally on the National Mall in Washington.

The staff of Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., confirmed to Al Jazeera that Ellison, who sat in the middle of Independence Avenue together with other House Democrats, had planned his act of civil disobedience to push for a law that, among other things, would allow millions of undocumented immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Ellison is expected to release a formal statement on his protest after his release.

Representatives of the social policy organization Center for Community Change and The Associated Press witnessed the arrests of House members John Lewis of Georgia; Luis Gutiérrez and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois; Raúl Grijalva of Arizona; Ellison; John Crowley and Charles Rangel of New York; and Al Green of Texas.

Source: Al Jazeera. 

October 8, thousands of people from across the country  gathered  in the nation’s capital to demand the House Republican leadership pass comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. After the rally at the National Mall and march to the U.S. Capitol, two hundred of the attendees – national and local community and labor leaders, impacted immigrants, civil rights and faith leaders, and Members of Congress,  follow the event at the steps of the U.S. Capitol with nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at underscoring the urgent need to vote and pass fair immigration reform this year. Speakers at the rally include Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL), civil rights leader Julian Bond, AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten. Other Members of Congress, national and local community, faith, and labor leaders will be standing on stage during key moments before the march begins.

Some of the national and local leaders participating in civil disobedience  include Tefere Gebre, Executive Vice-President of the AFL-CIO, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, Bruce Goldstein, Executive Director of Farmworker Justice Fund, Gustavo Torres, President of CASA in Action, Bernard Lunzer, Vice-President of the Communication Workers of America, Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, Abel Nuñez, Executive Director of the CARECEN DC office, D. Taylor, President of UNITE HERE, Maryland Delegate Ana Sol Gutierrez, John Stocks, Executive Director of the National Education Association, Maria Elena Durazo, President of the LA County Federation of Labor,  New Haven Alderman Delphine Clyburn, Joslyn Williams, President of the DC Central Labor Council, Jaime Contreras, Vice-President of SEIU 32BJ, Giev Aaron Kashkooli, Vice-President of the United Farmworkers, Terry Cavanagh, Executive Director of SEIU MD/DC State Council, Javier Valdes, Co-Director of Make the Road New York, Lawrence Benito, Executive Director of Illinois Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, and Javier Morillo, President of SEIU Local 26. For more on the Washington events go to www.AmericasVoice.com

These arrests follow the arrests of Women Activists for immigration on Sept.13, and union activists on Aug. 10.

by Duane Campbell

In Sacramento the California Republican Party headquarters across the street from the State Capitol was the site of a demonstration by Unite/Here and  SEIU members as well as community activists.  The Republican party was confronted with a message of,  “ We will remember your candidates in  November.