TalkLeft supports their efforts and opposes every one of these un-American, anti-immigrant bills. Details on H.R. 4437, The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, are here. The ACLU's synopsis is here.
On Monday, March 27, the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue debate on the bills. Please tell your Senators to reject H.R. 4437.
H.R. 4437 would send a chill through our communities and compromise our economy, but it would do nothing to make us more secure. Instead of targeting those who mean us harm, it would expand the definition of alien smuggling to criminalize the work of social service organizations, refugee agencies, churches, attorneys, and other groups that counsel undocumented immigrants. Additionally, H.R. 4437 would make presence in the United States without valid immigration status a criminal violation, rather than a civil one, essentially rendering every violation of status--however minor, technical, or unintentional--a federal crime.
The bill would also strip the courts of much of their remaining jurisdiction over immigration matters; gut the due process rights of aliens and permanent residents; expand expedited removal; expand the definition of "aggravated felony"; create new grounds of deportability and inadmissibility; increase mandatory detention; militarize the border; and place limitations on eligibility for naturalization. Rather than fixing our broken immigration system, these punitive measures would serve only to drive undocumented immigrants further into the shadows.
What we need instead:
To gain control of our borders and truly guarantee our security, we must implement a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that will address the 11 million people living here without papers. The vast majority of these undocumented immigrants are law-abiding, hardworking people who pay their taxes and contribute to our society. By allowing these people an opportunity to come out of the shadows, register with the government, pay a hefty fine, go through the security check process, and earn the privilege of legal status, we can restore the rule of law in our workplaces and communities and focus our enforcement resources on those who mean us harm.
Besides providing a path to citizenship with reasonable requirements for those who are already here, a realistic, comprehensive approach to immigration reform must include an effective guest worker program that would match willing workers with willing employers. It must also reunite close family members, some of whom have been separated for twenty years. Finally, comprehensive immigration reform must implement a smart border security regime so that we know who is coming into our country. Such reform would facilitate the cross-border flow of people and goods that is essential to our economy. A vibrant economy, in turn, is essential to fund our security needs.
Let's not repeat our past failed enforcement efforts:
We have spent the last 20 years tightening immigration enforcement, but it hasn't worked. Until our immigration laws are in sync with our economic realities and provide a safe, legal, and orderly way for migrants to enter our country to work and reunite with family, and for those who are here to come out of the shadows and become integrated with society, we cannot hope to gain control of our broken immigration system.
More on today's rallies here, which puts the number of protesters in Phoenix at 20,000. In Chicago two weeks ago, over 100,000 turned out.
The New York Times today reports on some other bad bills.
