Some Senators Offer Hateful Bills But Congress Must Remain Focused on DACA Priority
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Washington, DC —February 14, 2018 — Today, Republicans offered partisan anti-immigrant proposals for votes. These amendments are nothing more than an immigration reform in disguise while failing to provide a solution for DACA recipients – the real problem that Trump manufactured by ending the program on September 5, 2018.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an affiliation of five civil rights organizations, releases the following statement in response to this bill:
“Congress has one job right now when it comes to immigration, and that is to provide a legislative fix for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented youth known as DREAMers, including 130,000 Asian Americans.
We call on Congress to pass legislation in support of our undocumented youth, but we cannot throw other immigrants and border communities under the bus. It is short-sighted to fund a border wall that everyone except the President understands is poor public policy, fiscally irresponsible, and would cause great harm to border communities.
Senator Grassley’s harmful Secure and Succeed Act embodies the White House’s white nationalist proposal to end family immigration, the diversity visa program, double down on mass deportations and strip due process protections from immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, in particular children.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice condemns any trading on the lives of immigrants who have lived and worked in the U.S. for decades or pitting parents, family members, and other immigrant communities against the people that we seek to protect. Specifically, we urge Congress to preserve the family-based immigration system and the diversity visa program.
We cannot accept criminalization of immigrants or the treatment of our population as second-class people in exchange for a citizenship path for DACA recipients. It has been 161 days since the Trump administration manufactured this problem by suspending the DACA program.
Americans value families, and they know that immigrants and refugees have made our country what it is today. If Congress fails to act, it will be on the wrong side of history. We will not stand by idly as those in power seek to legislate discrimination, hate, and bigotry. Asian Americans Advancing Justice urges Senators to reject these recycled anti-immigrant proposals and swiftly pass a clean DREAM Act.”