Friday, March 15, 2024

Immigration Reform - Not MAGA Politics

 



As a former immigration attorney and a daughter of immigrants, I promise to keep speaking up for immigrants’ rights. I’ve been horrified at the dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies from Democrats in Congress and the White House.

In both bodies of Congress, we’re seeing members voting for xenophobic, fear mongering bills including spending billions of our taxpayer dollars on war and on far-right U.S. border policies to end asylum protections, speed up mass deportations, and lock up more refugees. 

President Biden endorsed that bipartisan Senate border bill, invited Trump to “join” him in working on it, and referenced it in last week’s State of the Union address as a priority. In that State of the Union speech, the president called undocumented immigrants “illegals,” prompting a response from human rights groups to affirm that No human being is illegal.

We must decriminalize the deeply human act of migration, affirm the rights of all people, and finally create a real path to citizenship for our immigrant neighbors who’ve lived here for years. As Michigan United explains: “We need citizenship and family reunification, not detention and deportations.”

Add your name today to tell Democrats in the White House and Congress: Don’t pander to far-right racists on immigration. Don’t dehumanize our immigrant neighbors. Fulfill your campaign promises to push for a more just and humane immigration process, including creating and expanding pathways to citizenship.

In my community, thousands of U.S. citizens can’t get their spouses access to a legal pathway to citizenship because of layers of bureaucracy that leave people waiting 10 or 20 years for an interview. 

I’m reaffirming the promise I made to the residents of my congressional district when they sent me to Congress: I will continue taking meaningful actions to end hateful Trump-era immigration policies, reunite families, welcome migrants and asylum seekers, and reform our outdated and inhumane immigration system. 

President Biden and other Democrats also made campaign promises to reduce deportations, reunite families, protect people fleeing danger, and support the millions of undocumented people who are already living and working in our communities. 

But since Trump left office, deportations have increased, and many Trump-era immigration policies have continued or expanded. This “prisons first, humanity later” approach fails our immigrant communities.

The recent Senate bill, which President Biden endorsed and again referenced in his State of the Union address as a priority, would spend an unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars to expand notoriously inhumane detention centers—including for-profit prisons that work with ICE. 

The bill would also send over a billion of our tax dollars for 24-hour “suspicionless surveillance” technology that could be used to profile and harm all immigrant families in the U.S.. 

Kids are still in cages, and ICE still runs hundreds of abusive jails across the country as part of the world’s largest immigration detention system. Progressives and activists have talked about the need to defund ICE, not send them more money to violate more people’s rights.

Please sign to tell Congress and the White House: We need citizenship and family reunification, not detention and deportations.

Thank you. Together we can build a future with dignity and safety for all people.

In solidarity,

Rashida Tlaib,  U.S. Congress

Thursday, February 29, 2024

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

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Its Time to Organize

  Dear Dolores Huerta Foundation Community,

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our new Get Out the Vote web page! This civic engagement hub is a one-stop destination for all your voting needs, designed to empower you with essential information and tools for the upcoming elections. Don't forget California's primary election is Tuesday, March 5, 2024!

On our Get Out the Vote page, you can:

- Learn how to register to vote

- Understand your voting rights

- Explore what's on your ballot

- Track your ballot

This page will be continuously updated with relevant voting and civic engagement information, serving as a valuable resource leading up to the elections. While it is designed for California voters, everyone is welcome to explore and benefit from its offerings.

Want to get directly involved?

Join us by phone banking from anywhere, or if you're in Kern County, why not canvass in Tulare or Bakersfield? We will host many more phone banking and canvassing efforts, so please stay tuned to our website and follow us on Instagram.

In Partnership,

-- Your Allies at the Dolores Huerta Foundation

support our work

 

DHF-logo


Monday, February 12, 2024

Thursday, February 08, 2024

Are Republicans Setting the Debate Terms ?

Is Biden Letting Republicans Set the Terms of the Immigration Debate?




“We have given into the Republican narrative in such a way that we’re beginning to sound like them”: A roundtable discussion with Rep. Delia Ramirez, Heba Gowayed, Victor Narro and Carlos Rojas Rodriguez

 

NATASCHA ELENA UHLMANN  FEBRUARY 8, 2024

In These Times. 

 

Going into the 2024 election, the GOP’s position on migration is abundantly clear. In June 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stood at a presidential campaign podium emblazoned with the words ​Stop the Invasion” and likened border crossings to home break-ins. On the campaign trail in December 2023, Donald Trump declared immigrants are ​poisoning the blood of our country.” Mere weeks ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lamented the state’s inability to shoot asylum seekers crossing the border because ​the Biden administration would charge us with murder.” These pronouncements mark a mainstreaming of eliminationist rhetoric: Where conservatives once coyly hinted at nativism, they now openly fantasize of murder.

 

https://inthesetimes.com/article/biden-letting-republicans-set-terms-immigration

 

 

What should the border conversation look like?

See. First They Came for the Immigrants.

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/first-they-came-for-the-immigrants

 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/the-5-biggest-trump-republican-lies-about-illegal-immigration

and more. 

 

 


 

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

The Border Bill Fails.

The Senators and the Biden Administration may have forgotten about Operation Wetback, but we have not. 

 U.S. immigration policy is a mess. It was made worse by the Trump administration, 2016-2020.   And,  it is unlikely to change in the current political era.

In his campaign this week Trump has promised the largest deportation in U.S. history. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html?
 
For background, readers should look at Operation Wetback under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the so-called Mexican Repatriation project of the 1930’s. 
The implementation of Operation Wetback was a result of Attorney General Herbert Brownell's tour of Southern California in August 1953. It was there that he made note of the "shocking and unsettling" issue that was illegal immigration.[2] The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th century and some were naturalized citizens who were once native, Operation Wetback was designed to send them to Mexico.[3]
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
 
Operation Wetback was a follow-up to the prior Mexican Repatriation when as many as 2 million were deported, many of them children.  Up to 40% of those deported were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation
 
Currently there is a competition among Republicans to be the toughest on immigration policy by focusing on fentanyl, which commonly begins production in China.

See additional posts on immigration below.