Join the Call: Include All Families in Immigration Reform

You're invited to join Representative Mike Honda (CA), Bishop Minerva Carcano, and families impacted by our broken immigration system on a special grassroots call designed for advocates and concerned community members like you!

Learn about the moral imperative to move comprehensive immigration reform forward this year, and hear stories about why LGBT families need your support to make sure their immigration rights are protected.

Comprehensive immigration reform isn't truly comprehensive unless all families, gay and straight, are included. We hope you can join us for this important nationwide call!

To register and receive materials for the call, please go to www.LGBTforCIR.org. You'll also have the unique opportunity to submit questions to Rep. Honda before the call.

Truly Inclusive Immigration Reform Must End Discrimination against LGBT Families

Today, key members of Congress stood in unity to call on their colleagues to support passage of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) as part of any future immigration reform effort. Tens of thousands of LGBT binational families are counting on this critically important legislation in order to achieve the most basic equality: The freedom to be with their families, and the people they love.

FCNL joined fellow coalition members from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), immigrants’ rights, civil rights and faith communities in issuing a statement for the news conference. The statement reads, in part, "Today, leaders made clear that all future immigration legislation must be truly inclusive, and we are proud to stand with them in that call. We are committed to working, together, for this long overdue and much-needed victory and to honoring our country’s commitment to families and its rich history as a nation of immigrants."

Reps. Nadler (NY), Honda (CA), Gutierrez (IL), Polis (CO) and Quigley (IL) participated in this important news conference. For more information, read Immigration Equality's press release.

As my colleague Bill Mefford, director of Civil and Human Rights for the General Board of Church and Society with The United Methodist Church, said recently:

“Just as Jesus did not set any preconditions on identifying himself with, and loving, the sojourner, so too does he call all who claim to follow him to love and welcome the sojourner without moral preconditions... To demand the right to prophetically challenge the nation to incorporate hospitality into our immigration policy, but then to work to exclude some people based on their sexual orientation, is to lose the moral basis for making that prophetic challenge. We want immigration reform that is just and humane, and that is truly comprehensive and truly moral.”

Immigration reform will only truly be comprehensive when all families, including LGBT families, are included. We welcome the commitment by these members of Congress to work to ensure that binational LGBT families will no longer be locked out of the U.S. immigration system.

Rep. Honda discusses his bill, the Reuniting Families Act.

Rep. Honda states, "The President has called on Congress to address immigration reform, and I stand ready to heed that call and support an effort that is inclusive of LGBT families."

Rep. Polis insists, "We must provide all domestic partners and married couples the same rights and obligations in any immigration legislation."

Rep. Quigley reminds us, "Our march in the direction of progress and justice for families across this country cedes its moral high ground unless we say to say to LGBT families that this is their movement, too."

We listen as Rep. Gutierrez says, "We should modernize our laws to facilitate legal immigration so that we keep families together and individuals do not have to twist themselves in knots to conform to our outdated laws." I had no idea Rep. Honda was right behind me!

Senator Franken Introduces HELP Separated Children Act

Today, Senators Al Franken (MN) and Herb Kohl (WI) introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act. FCNL is proud to support this legislation. Here is Senator Franken's press release:

Franken, Kohl Introduce HELP Separated Children Act
Legislation Would Ensure Children’s Safety During Immigration Raids

WASHINGTON, D.C. [06/22/10] – Today, U.S. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act to keep kids safe, informed, and accounted for during Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.

According to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, 108,434 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the past 10 years.

On December 12, 2006, ICE carried out enforcement actions on Swift & Company meatpacking plants in six states, including a plant in Worthington, Minnesota. The raids left numerous children – most of them citizens and legal residents – without their parents and with no way of finding them. One second-grader in Worthington came home that night to find his two-year old brother alone and his mother and father missing. For the next week, the second-grader stayed home to care for his brother while his grandmother traveled to Worthington to meet them.

“Four million U.S. citizen children in our country have at least one undocumented immigrant parent,” said Sen. Franken. “Forty-thousand of those children live in Minnesota. They should not have to live in fear that one day their parents will simply not come home. They deserve much better than being abandoned without explanation.”

“Under no circumstances should children have to fend for themselves. Child welfare is one of my highest priorities and it is essential that children are protected and cared for when their parents are detained,” Sen. Kohl said. “This legislation offers safeguards for children whose parents are placed in federal custody so they are not left on their own.”

On June 22, 2007, ICE agents staged a raid in the Jackson Heights Manufactured Home Park in Shakopee, Minnesota. Early that Friday morning, around 6:00 am, federal agents seized a husband and his wife for suspected immigration violations. They didn’t notice the couple’s daughter, who was sleeping. Later that morning, the seven year-old girl was found wandering the park, looking for her parents. It wasn’t until some neighbors saw her and called the authorities, that she learned what had happened to her mom and dad.

The HELP Separated Children Act strengthens humanitarian protections enacted by the Bush and Obama administrations and extends them to any enforcement action. Specifically, it:

· Keeps state and local authorities in the know. It’s state schools and child welfare agencies that address the aftermath of immigration enforcement actions. Building on existing standards, this bill makes sure that state authorities are notified before or soon after enforcement actions.

· Effectively identifies at-risk kids. Detainees are afraid to tell ICE that they have kids at home. This bill permits child welfare agencies and local NGOs to screen detainees to identify parents and locate at-risk children.

· Allows parents to arrange for care of their children. Detained parents must receive free, confidential calls to arrange for their kids’ care. They should not be transferred unless they know how to contact their kids – and what will happen to them. No matter where they are, parents must be allowed daily calls and regular visits with their children.

· Protects kids during interrogations. Kids should not be forced to witness their parents’ interrogations or translate for ICE agents.

· Allows parents to participate in family court proceedings – and alert authorities to abuse. This bill requires authorities to help detained parents participate in family court proceedings affecting their children. It also gives parents free calls to report child abuse.

· Protects the best interests of children. This bill requires ICE to consider the best interests of children in detention, release, and transfer decisions affecting their parents.

The HELP Separated Children Act is also co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.). Related legislation was introduced in the House by Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).

In Our Community: Immigration News

On Wednesday, I attended the arrival ceremony at the White House for President Calderon of Mexico - you can see him pictured above with President Obama. For more on that and other updates, here it is, your immigration news from Monday, May 17 to Monday, May 24.

During a joint session of Congress, President Calderon spoke strongly against the new Arizona law which, as he said, "introduces a terrible idea: using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement." His remarks on this subject were greeted with a standing ovation. Also during his visit, the United States and Mexico announced the creation of a joint committee on border-related activities.

In the pop culture world, immigration also got a shout-out: The new Miss USA is Rima Fakih, an Arab-American immigrant. She was born in Lebanon and came to the United States as a young child, eventually settling in Michigan. She is believed to be the first Arab American and Muslim to win the contest.

San Francisco is trying to opt out of Secure Communities, a Homeland Security program run by ICE in which fingerprints taken at local jails are run through a national database to check arrestees' immigration status. The city's sheriff has said that Secure Communities conflicts with the city's policy of only reporting foreign-born persons who are booked for felonies. Secure Communities doesn't align with ICE's objective of going after the "most dangerous criminals" - instead it casts a wide net regardless of individual circumstances - and we need cities like San Francisco (and DC) to push ICE to clarify the program's purpose.

As I was perusing the immigration blogs this past week, I came across this concerning clip: South Carolina has introduced a bill copying the Arizona law. The Wall Street Journal has an article on how immigrants are often reluctant to report domestic abuse, if going to the police means risking deportation. This problem, of states taking federal law into their own hands, is clearly going to get worse before it gets better.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL) recently endorsed a plan to include LGBT partners in immigration reform. Currently, LGBT Americans are unable to petition for their foreign-born partners. The inclusion of the Uniting American Families Act in immigration reform would end this long-standing denial of civil rights and equality.

Michelle Obama's visit to an elementary school in Maryland catapulted the question of family unity onto the national stage, when a second-grader expressed fears that her mother would be deported. You can watch the video here. According to the Interfaith Immigration Coalition, families can't wait any longer for a just, humane immigration reform bill.

But Didn't They Break the Law?

One of the most common questions I hear is, "But didn't they break the law? Why should we reward immigrants for coming to the United States illegally?"

FCNL's work on immigration is guided by the call for right relationships among all people. We recognize that it is neither feasible nor humane to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States. Instead of lining up the buses, we need to find a workable solution.

First of all, the U.S. immigration system is broken. Sometimes I get asked, "Why don't they just get in line?" For many people seeking to enter the United States so that they can work hard, support their families, and contribute to the U.S. economy - there is no line to get into.

Work visas
The national economy depends on both high- and lower-skilled foreign workers, even though that fact can sometimes be hard for us to acknowledge. As Senator Feinstein (CA) described in a press conference last week, even in a recession certain industries - like agriculture - still can't find enough native-born workers to get the job done. But visas for lower-skilled immigrant workers just aren't readily available. Moreover, the current system creates incentives for disingenuous employers to hire undocumented immigrants, keep them in poor work conditions, and pay them well below minimum wage. This drives down wages for all. The broken system hurts law-abiding employers, native-born workers, and immigrants alike. The "wink wink, come on in" system facilitates exploitation and is no longer sustainable.

Family visas
Families are the fundamental unit of society. But immigrants seeking to be reunited with their families have to wait between four and twenty-two years to be reunited with their close loved ones. It is immoral to keep a young girl apart from her father or mother for up to seven years. These wait times exist because of backlogs of pending applications and bureaucratic delays. Reforming the family visa system wouldn't allow for "chain migration" (you can't bring in your aunts, cousins, or other extended relatives anyway), but it would allow parents and children to reunite in a timely manner. Plus, family reunification does contribute to the U.S. economy. Immigrant workers will be more likely to stay in the country and integrate if they can bring their immediate relatives with them, and most family members come to the United States intending to work hard to provide their children with opportunities to succeed.

So, neither the work-based nor family-based visa systems are working properly right now. As a result, immigrants are faced with impossible choices.

The vast majority of undocumented immigrants come to the United States to work hard and rejoin their families, not to cause our communities harm. But those who would utilize the legal system are prevented from doing so, because the current system is inefficient and outdated. Then, immigrants - and not the broken laws - are perceived as the problem and punished.

When the United States was founded, one of the core principles woven into the fabric of the national identity was this: Where the law is unjust, it should be changed.

FCNL does not advocate for rewarding illegal immigration. Rather, we support a reasonable and inclusive path for undocumented immigrants to regularize their status and eventually earn citizenship. Such a program should be workable and not hindered by overly punitive criteria.

Components of a pathway to legal status
We need a solution that allows undocumented immigrants to meet a reasonable set of criteria so that they can be integrated into the legal system. Over the past several years, a number of constructive proposals have been put forward. An earned pathway to legal status would include requirements such as:

• Paying any unpaid back taxes
• Learning English
• Providing biographic and biometric information
• Completing a criminal background check
• Paying a reasonable fee or fine
• Performing community service
  

At FCNL, we maintain that this set of criteria should not be overly punitive. In the past, Congress proposed exorbitant fees and other measures that would have prevented large swaths of people from participating and thus defeated the primary purpose of the program.

In addition, this kind of pathway to legal status would be fair - undocumented immigrants would go to the "back of the line." As mentioned earlier, there is a backlog of family visa applications. Undocumented immigrants wouldn't get to "cut in line" ahead of individuals who have been waiting since the mid-1990s (or even earlier) to reunite with their loved ones. Instead, they would be registered, receive a transitional visa, and then wait seven or eight years for the family backlog to clear. Only then could eligible undocumented immigrants adjust to become legal permanent residents and eventually apply for citizenship.

Some special cases need additional consideration. One of FCNL's principles is that the pathway to legal status should be inclusive. This means that refugees, asylum-seekers, and multi-status families (in which some family members have papers while others do not) should be included. In addition, undocumented students (who came to this country as children, not of their own will) should be encouraged to stay and pursue their education in the United States via the DREAM Act.

At this point, I occasionally hear concerns expressed that this kind of pathway to legal status and eventual citizenship would create incentives for more people to attempt to immigrate to the United States without proper authorization. Rest assured: any immigration reform bill enacted by Congress would almost certainly only allow undocumented immigrants to earn legal status if they could prove that they have been in the country since the date of enactment of the bill. If an individual had arrived in the country after the date of enactment, they would not be eligible.

Ultimately, a reasonable earned pathway to legal status would deal squarely with the current reality without rewarding illegal immigration.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said of the new Arizona law, "A solution that fails to distinguish between a young child coming over the border in search of his mother and a drug smuggler is not a solution."

We need solutions that actually work. Migration has been a part of human existence since its inception. With careful consideration and open dialogue, our nation can create an immigration system that protects public safety and national security without sacrificing the principles upon which the United States was built - fairness, opportunity, and compassion.

In Our Community: Immigration News

As Congress returns from recess, immigration advocates across the country are demanding real, practical solutions to the broken immigration system. Here is the news on immigration from Monday, April 5 to Monday, April 12. Enjoy!

Here at FCNL, we are keeping a close eye on the draft immigration bill in the Senate, co-written by Senators Schumer (NY) and Graham (SC). No legislative text has been released yet, but if Majority Leader Reid's recent statement is any indicator, this comprehensive bill will see the light of day soon. At a rally in Nevada that drew over 6,000 supporters, Senator Reid said, "We're going to come back, we're going to have comprehensive immigration reform now... We need to do this this year. We cannot wait."

The Supreme Court just made a landmark ruling on immigration. Lawyers are now required to tell their immigrant clients whether a guilty plea could lead to possible deportation. This should seem fairly obvious, but - under overly harsh immigration laws - pleading guilty to even a minor crime can trigger mandatory detention and deportation. We congratulate the Supreme Court's decision to uphold real justice and protect immigrants' rights.

The nation's broadest coalition of immigration advocates, the Reform Immigration for America campaign, finally took a public position opposing the fundamentally flawed 287(g) program. This program, which was condemned in a recent Homeland Security investigative report, allows local police to arrest anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. The New York Times calls the 287(g) program "too broken to fix" and America's Voice has created this excellent video on how immigration enforcement is tearing families apart:

In Our Community: Immigration News

Hello again and welcome back to your local source for immigration news! We're still digging out after more than 40 inches of snow fell in DC last week. To catch us up a bit, here are highlights from Monday, February 8 to Tuesday, February 16. Happy reading!

The faith community continues to push for comprehensive immigration reform, delivering tens of thousands of postcards to members of Congress and coordinating prayer vigils across the country. More than 100 faith events will be held in February, from South Carolina to Washington State. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition has made available an organizing guide so that you, too, can gather your community together to raise awareness about the need for reform.

Without comprehensive immigration reform, the broken immigration system creates headaches and difficulties for employers and employees alike. Two new articles - available here and here - document the challenges facing foreign farm workers, who would benefit directly from a comprehensive reform bill. Workers, compelled out of economic necessity to immigrate without the proper documents, face poor working conditions and low wages. Employers, under pressure to increase wages and fulfill Labor Department rules, struggle to keep their businesses viable. The one thing they all agree on? The time for reform is now.

Workers aren't the only ones suffering - families divided by immigration laws face serious hardships in raising their children. This heartbreaking article from the New York Times documents the life of Elizabeth Encalada. Her husband, an immigrant from Ecuador, was ordered back to his home country. He then killed himself upon learning that he would be unable to return to the United States to reunite with his family. The family visa system is clogged with applications, compelling families who play by the rules to turn to desperate measures.

The Immigration Policy Center has released a special report, "Many Happy Returns," on how remittances can help Haiti recover and strengthen the U.S. economy. Many of this country's immigrants send a large chunk of their earnings back to their families and communities in their country of origin. On the surface, it might seem like this money is just disappearing from the U.S. economy, but really, it boosts U.S. participation in the global economy.

A federal judge asks whether it's worth the cost of prosecuting non-criminal immigrants, and a new report by TRAC indicates that the majority of immigrants held in detention centers by ICE have never been convicted of any crime. Even though ICE claims to focus on non-citizens who pose a real threat to public safety, the numbers tell a different story. ICE's director, John Morton, says, "This isn't a question of whether or not we will detain people. We will detain people, and we will detain them on a grand scale." Morton's comment leads us to ask, "But why?"

But don't let me leave you with a rhetorical question - ask the government yourself! The Department of Homeland Security has created an "Open Government" website and they want your input. From now until March 19, you can submit ideas and questions to DHS about how to increase transparency about how the agency manages the immigration detention system.

In Our Community: Immigration News

With the State of the Union and the release of the federal budget, this week has been a busy time for folks in Washington, DC. With that, take a look at the news on immigration from Monday, January 25 to Monday, February 1. Happy reading!

The State of the Union was this past Wednesday and if you stuck around until the end, you heard President Obama put in a brief word on the need to keep working to fix the broken immigration system. Here, Immigration Impact bloggers offer their own interpretation of the speech. In response, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL), the author of the CIR ASAP bill to comprehensively reform the immigration system, wrote a powerful op-ed piece calling on Congress to take action.

Here at FCNL, we're urging you to do your part to advance President Obama's vision by organizing a prayer vigil in your community this February. By standing together in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors, we can show that we still believe that immigration reform can't wait. Take a look at the Interfaith Immigration Coalition's planning guide to coordinate your own prayer vigil today!

On Monday, January 25, DHS Assistant Secretary John Morton spoke at the Migration Policy Institute about his plans to overhaul the immigration detention system. Morton is working to create a civil detention system that would replace the jail-like model that currently detains over 30,000 immigrants a day. While we welcome the administration's commitment to reform, we urge Assistant Secretary Morton and his team to work diligently to determine who really needs to be held in detention facilities and who can be released.

As Victoria Lopez writes in the Arizona Daily Star, the immigration detention system lacks transparency and accountability. Many facilities, like this one in Georgia, are run by private prison corporations, which lack the training and oversight to manage a population of civil immigrant detainees. In Colorado, protestors and our friends with the American Friends Service Committee gather regularly outside the Aurora detention facility.

Detention reforms will become all the more important as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) expands their Secure Communities program throughout the country. This program, which checks fingerprints in local jails against an immigration database, is meant to capture high-level criminals who are in violation of immigration laws. Instead, Secure Communities ends up focusing primarily on nonviolent offenders, who get caught in the net and may then be detained and deported. Nationally, Secure Communities accounts for about 40% of the immigrants held in jail-like detention centers that are known for human rights abuses.

The United States and the international community continue to respond to the disaster in Haiti by providing emergency humanitarian relief. The extreme devastation has left people across the country wondering, What more can we do? An op-ed in the Washington Post opines that the U.S. government should accelerate visa processing for Haitians who have family members in the United States. Many of these visa applicants have been waiting four years or more to reunite with their loved ones.

New Reports on Detainee Transfers Outline Chaotic System and Due Process Challenges

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has just released a new report, "Locked Up Far Away: The Transfer of Immigrants to Remote Detention Centers in the United States." This report details the plight of immigrant detainees whose basic rights, including access to legal representation, are compromised due to frequent transfers to detention facilities in remote parts of the country. In HRW's press release, Alison Parker (the report's author and the organization's deputy U.S. director) says, "ICE is increasingly subjecting detainees to a chaotic game of musical chairs... And it's a game with dire consequences since it may keep them from finding an attorney or presenting evidence in their defense."

According to the report:

• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has so far rejected efforts to place enforceable standards on detainee transfers.
• Detainee transfers are becoming increasingly common, more than doubling from 2003 (122,783) to 2007 (261,941). Transfers have significant adverse effects on detainees' access to legal counsel and families, ultimately leading to wrongful deportations.
  
• HRW recommends that ICE should: centralize control of its facilities, instead of continuing to rely on subcontracted facilities such as local jails; turn to alternatives to detention as often as possible; work with the Executive Office for Immigration Review to improve detainees' access to attorneys; and revise current guidelines to prohibit transfers except when necessary under specific conditions.

Research for this report was conducted in collaboration with Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University, which has released its own report as well. TRAC also has made public a new and highly useful resource that can generate reports on transfer records for specific immigration detention facilities.

In addition, the Constitution Project has released its own report detailing immigration detention conditions and the need to improve access to legal counsel, called "Recommendations for Reforming Our Immigration Detention System and Promoting Access to Counsel in Immigration Proceedings". This document offers an overview of and recommendations regarding certain aspects of detention reform.

All of these reports come at an important time: The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security has also just released a report on detainee transfers. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement Policies and Procedures Related to Detainee Transfers" seeks to determine whether ICE detention officers properly justify detainee transfers according to ICE's standards. The report finds that ICE needs to create a national standard on detainee transfers because the current process is inconsistent causing errors, delays, and confusion.

Ultimately, detainee transfers cause hardship for immigrants caught up in the broken immigration system. Transfered to remote facilities away from their families and lawyers, with few ways to communicate with their loved ones and gather materials to argue their case, immigrant detainees face tremendous odds. Moreover, the majority of immigrant detainees are non-criminal yet they are held in jail-like settings and do not have the right to a government-paid lawyer. Comprehensive immigration reform, including detention reform, is desperately needed to restore justice to the U.S. immigration system.

In Our Community: Immigration News

As we prepare for Thanksgiving and gather our loved ones close, let's look forward to a new season in which all families, including immigrant families, can stay together. Immigration reform could be around the corner, but only if momentum keeps building. Take a look at the news on immigration from Monday, November 16 to Monday, November 23. Happy reading!

The Senate has started its final debate on the health care reform bill, which it hopes to pass before the turn of the year. However, the Senate version of the bill restricts health care for immigrants in ways that the House version does not. The House version allows undocumented immigrants to use their own money to buy into the health insurance exchange, if their employers do not cover them. The Senate version does not have this option. Neither would permit undocumented immigrants to receive federal subsidies on their insurance. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are upset at the Obama administration for supporting these restrictions - which reduce access to health care - and they're not afraid to voice their frustrations. Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants with life-threatening conditions are being turned away by public hospitals that can no longer afford to serve them.

The Reform Immigration FOR America campaign organized a telephonic town hall with Representative Luis Gutierrez last Wednesday and it was a huge success! Representative Gutierrez was joined by Representatives Nydia Velazquez and Raul Grijalva on a conference call with thousands of people across the country. Rep. Gutierrez restated his commitment to passing humane immigration reform this Congress. He plans to introduce his progressive bill on comprehensive immigration reform this December. Click here to listen to a recording of the campaign's conference call.

The economic recovery hasn't advanced as far as anyone would like and immigrants - just like everyone else - are feeling the pinch. The Migration Policy Institute's new report actually suggests that many immigrant workers have been affected more deeply by the recession than native-born workers. Labor unions have been speaking out in favor of immigration reform, recognizing that improving working conditions for immigrant and low-wage workers will benefit everyone in the long run.

One component of immigration reform that would support workers' rights and economic growth is the creation of a reasonable pathway to legal status and eventual citizenship for undocumented immigrants. However, rising application fees may soon stand in the way of those seeking to come out of the shadows. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is experiencing a major budget shortfall and may increase application fees - again - in order to cover costs. Since 2007, a green card application has cost more than $1000 and a citizenship application costs $595. If fees rise again, many immigrants will be unable to overcome this barrier as they seek to integrate more fully into U.S. society by regularizing their legal status.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced plans to audit 1,000 more companies suspected of hiring undocumented immigrants. Following the dismissal of 1,200 janitors in Minnesota in what the Minnesota Public Radio called a 'quiet' immigration raid, this announcement by ICE points to a new enforcement trend. Comprehensive immigration reform would enable undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, ensure that their rights as workers are protected, and reduce incentives for disingenuous employers to exploit their workers. Let's be proactive by reforming the system, instead of ramping up enforcement.

The New York Times has published an excellent editorial on how children in immigrant families are suffering under the current broken immigration system. These children often endure long separations from one or both parents. These separations damage children psychologically, drive them into poverty, and negatively affect their academic performance. They are not well-supported by the current system, as they try to integrate into U.S. society. This is not an issue "out there" but one right at the doorstep. The United States is built on immigration, and the U.S. government would be doing a tremendous disservice to society as a whole by failing to integrate immigrant children into mainstream society.

In Need of Protection: Vulnerable Populations

Stories from Detention - Week 5

If you were in detention, what would your needs be? What if your children had no one to care for them at home? What if you were pregnant? What if you had a heart condition? What if you had been abused?

In our last post in this series, we looked at how the conditions in detention centers often do not meet the basic needs of immigrant detainees. However, detainees' needs differ according to their circumstances. Some people, such as those fleeing persecution or torture abroad, are particularly vulnerable and need additional protections.

Right now, when people seeking asylum try to enter the United States, they are usually detained in county jails, privatized prisons, and ICE-controlled detention centers as their cases are processed. These facilities are highly restrictive. They are not appropriate for asylum-seekers who have already had traumatic experiences. Being held in prison may actually trigger memories of past trauma and cause lasting psychological harm.

For example, let's say you were apprehended in your country of origin for political activism and then tortured in a clinical setting. You flee to the United States but then being held in a facility with cramped cells, fluorescent lights, metal tables, and armed guards could trigger flashbacks, nightmares, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. Basically, the jail-like conditions in detention facilities can aggravate post-traumatic stress disorder for asylum-seekers.

Detainees fleeing persecution must deal with the emotional and physical effects of past traumas while simultaneously trying to take care of their basic needs, such as their health. In this week's video clip, we will hear the story of an asylum-seeker from Cameroon. When she arrived at an airport in the United States, her infant child was taken from her and she was detained for 11 months without appropriate medical care.

Please note: This video clip is mostly audio, without visuals, because this asylum-seeker has chosen to remain anonymous. Please turn up your volume and take the time to listen to her story.



This asylum-seeker did not pose a threat to public safety. Still, the U.S. government held her in a detention center while her asylum claim was reviewed. Meanwhile, her family and her health suffered. She, like members of other vulnerable populations, was caught up in a system that fails to recognize the needs of individual detainees.

Who might be considered vulnerable? Vulnerable immigrants include asylum-seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, the sick and elderly, LGBT immigrants, pregnant women, families, green card holders, and the parents of U.S. citizen children.

People in these categories are in need of additional protections, which the current system does not provide. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not yet have a national system in place to make sure that vulnerable detainees are treated humanely.

However, DHS recently announced plans to overhaul the immigration detention system. Here are a few specific changes that DHS should make to ensure that vulnerable detainees are protected:

DHS should develop a nationwide assessment that would be conducted for each detainee when they are first apprehended. This assessment would determine the needs and risks for each detainee. That way, DHS would have a much better sense of who's in their custody and what kind of protections and services they may need.

DHS should enforce humane detention standards, including special provisions for vulnerable populations. They should improve oversight in all their facilities - including privatized facilities that they contract out to - to make sure that basic rights are protected and that abuses are not tolerated in the system.

DHS should ensure that immigrant detainees each get their fair day in court. This would mean improving access to lawyers, law libraries, and telephones; making translation services available; and refraining from transferring detainees arbitrarily to other facilities around the country.

DHS should prioritize vulnerable detainees - like the asylum-seeker who describes her experience in today's video - for alternative to detention programs and release into the community. Most immigrant detainees are non-criminal and do not pose a risk to society. They should be held in the least restrictive setting possible.

Next week, in our final post in this blog series, we'll explore what these alternatives to detention might look like. Creating alternatives to detention would be a strong step in fixing this broken immigration enforcement system.

Other posts in this series:

Stories from Detention: Introduction
Rights and Dignity Denied: One Woman's Story
No Human Being is Illegal: Civil Offenses
Searching for Justice: Mandatory Detention
Inside the Walls: Detention Conditions
There's a Better Way: Alternatives to Detention

In Our Community: Immigration News

You've probably been steeped already in the news coverage of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. Tear yourself away for a moment (I know, it's hard to compete with the Cookie Monster) and take the time to read about the news on immigration from Monday, November 2 to Monday, November 9.

People from all over the country continue to speak out in unison, saying that the 287(g) program has got to go. This program, which deputizes local police officers to enforce immigration laws, has caused widespread racial and religious profiling. It terrorizes communities by allowing the police to arrest people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants, with little oversight or training. In Tennessee, Jan Snider has written an excellent op-ed on how the 287(g) program tears apart families. This program is broken beyond repair and must be terminated in order to restore trust between police officers and the communities they are charged to protect.

Five men from New York who were detained, abused, and deported just after the attacks of September 11, 2001 have just settled their case with the U.S. government to the tune of $1.26 million. These men were caught up in post-9/11 sweeps that relied primarily on racial and religious profiling and targeted Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men. They had no terrorist ties. They were then abused while in detention - they were beaten, strip-searched, deprived of sleep, and more - and then deported. We commend the Center for Constitutional Rights for assisting these men with a class action lawsuit to expose the human rights violations that the attacks of September 11, 2001 engendered.

Private prison corporations continue to profit off of detaining immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. More than 57% of the immigrants detained by the Department of Homeland Security are held in private prisons. The GEO Group is adding 1,100 beds to its immigration detention facility in Aurora, CO. CCA is trying to get a contract with ICE to build a new 2,200-bed detention center in Los Angeles. These corporations operate for profit, with little oversight of their prison guards and even less concern about the conditions in their detention centers. Privatizing the immigration detention system is not a workable solution to the immigration dilemma. The Department of Homeland Security should work to improve oversight and develop nationwide alternatives to detention for immigrants. Check out our blog series Stories from Detention for more information.

When I was scanning the blogs this week, I came across a valuable article offering four lessons that should encourage lawmakers to keep immigration reform on the Congressional agenda. As the House passes the health care reform bill and the Senate continues to debate, the political will to work on immigration reform may be dissipating. If comprehensive immigration reform is to become a reality during this Congress, it is important to encourage your Members of Congress to keep immigration reform on the agenda. This is not merely a question of fixing a broken immigration system - it is an issue of life and death for many of the immigrants waiting in long visa backlogs or detained in U.S. prisons.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Happy Halloween! Here is the news on immigration from Monday, October 26 to Monday, November 2. Grab a cup of coffee and take a look!

If you only read one article today, read the New York Times article on immigrant detainees seeking legal representation while held in the Varick Street detention center in Greenwich Village. One hundred detainees in this facility submitted a petition to New York lawyers asking for pro bono legal services. However, the lawyers are having trouble working with clients who may be arbitrarily transferred to detention centers in other states without notice. This article lays out some fundamental concerns with the U.S. immigration detention system. For additional information, take a look at our most recent post in the Stories from Detention series.

However, immigrant detainees don't only need lawyers - they also need access to adequate medical care. As this detainee's death demonstrates, immediate changes are needed to ensure that immigrant detainees receive medical treatment both for pre-existing conditions and for illnesses and disabilities that arise during their stay in detention facilities. The number of preventable deaths that occur in the immigration detention system are absolutely unreasonable.

The National Association for Evangelicals aren't the only faith-based group supporting comprehensive immigration reform - over 100 Caribbean-American pastors just visited Congress to support immigration reform and Lutheran bishops raised concerns on immigration recently as well. In a committee meeting on October 28-29, they agreed to support immigration reform and called for a suspension of raids until comprehensive immigration reform has been enacted. The bishops also expressed concerns for families separated by the immigration system, saying, "We would like comprehensive immigration reform right now. We want it to be humane -- a kind of immigration reform that protects U.S. borders but also protects family interests so that families aren't divided."

In an exciting development, police leaders have also come out in support of immigration reform. Law enforcement officials from California, Texas, Iowa, and elsewhere spoke in a telephonic press conference on how the current immigration system undermines trust between police officers and communities. They also wrote op-eds expressing their main concern: when immigrants are afraid that the police will deport them, they are less likely to report crimes and abuse. This undermines public safety and creates an adversarial relationship between communities and law enforcement officers. One sheriff made a particularly strong statement: "Law enforcement needs to stay focused on its mission of preventing and investigating crimes, not checking immigration status. Comprehensive immigration reform is overdue and needed from a law enforcement perspective."

This lack of trust between police officers and communities has a disproportionate effect on immigrant women, who too often choose not to report domestic violence for fear of being forced to leave the country. In related news, the Obama administration has given a strong signal that it supports granting asylum to women who are victims of domestic abuse. If the United States is open to recognizing domestic violence as a possible claim for asylum, this would be a tremendous step forward for women fleeing horrific abuses abroad.

Labor organizations have also recognized that immigration reform would benefit all the workers they represent - not only immigrant workers but also low-income workers across the country. The AFL-CIO, National Employment Law Project and American Rights at Work Education Fund have come together to say that the rights of all workers must be protected. They noted that ICE's workplace raids have made it harder for all workers, not just immigrant workers, to raise grievances about working conditions. Immigration reform would be an important step to reducing the exploitation of workers across the board.

Finally, Representative Joe Crowley (NY) and 110 of his colleagues have just submitted a letter to President Obama stressing the urgency of comprehensive immigration reform. The letter itself is available here. Crowley stated, "This is a moral imperative - the time is now." Even as legislation on health care reform continues to make its way through the halls of Congress, these legislators recognize the importance of keeping immigration reform at the heart of their agenda for the upcoming months.

Searching for Justice: Mandatory Detention

Stories from Detention - Week 3

In the last post in this series, we discussed how immigration violations are civil, not criminal offenses. If that is so, then how has it been possible for the number of immigrant detainees to skyrocket in recent years?

Recent immigration laws have deprived immigrants of their dignity and their rights. By denying immigrants the right to a fair day in court, these laws have greatly expanded the number of people detained and deported each year.

In 1996, laws on expedited removal and mandatory detention created some of the most severe failures to uphold justice within the U.S. immigration system. Expedited removal is a procedure that allows immigration agencies to deport certain immigrants without a hearing in front of an independent court. Detention is mandatory during the time it takes to deport these people from the United States.

It is common knowledge that the U.S. government was set up as a system of checks and balances - without the judicial branch, that system would be severely weakened. However, the U.S. immigration system currently lacks this same measure of justice.

Before we get into the history of how expedited removal and mandatory detention were put into place and which immigrant populations are affected by these policies, let's take a look at how this denial of justice affected Warren Joseph, an immigrant from Trinidad. As Joseph's story will demonstrate, mandatory detention can last months, or even years.

Joseph was fortunate that his case was processed and he was eventually able to reunite with his son and remain in the United States. Many are not as fortunate - they are deported, without ever having had an opportunity to argue their case before a judge.

So, who is affected by expedited removal and mandatory detention?

As Joseph's story indicates, immigrants who have been convicted of a crime are subject to mandatory detention. The offenses for which immigrants are detained and deported include minor misdemeanors, such as shoplifting or petty drug possession. These minor misdemeanors may not have required any jail time, but they are still grounds for deportation under current immigration laws.

This policy affects all non-citizens, including green card holders with strong ties to the United States who have previously been convicted of a crime, even if the conviction is for a minor offense and even if - like Joseph - they have already paid their debt to society. They are punished retroactively for crimes they committed years, even decades ago, even for crimes that were not deportable offenses at the time that they were committed.

Mandatory detention also applies to arriving immigrants who do not have the proper documentation and who are unable to establish a "credible fear" of returning to their country of origin.

As I mentioned earlier, immigration laws were passed in 1996 that expanded the scope of mandatory detention and expedited removal. At the same time, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security increased significantly. As a result, the number of immigrant detainees has increased dramatically in the past fifteen years. According to the Detention Watch Network, the U.S. detained approximately 95,000 individuals in 2001. By 2007, over 300,000 people were being detained annually under immigration laws. By the end of 2009, that number will have increased yet again to more than 440,000 immigrant detainees.

Mandatory detention and expedited removal, policies that affect thousands of people's lives each year, are actually illegal under international law because they do not grant detainees a fair day in court. According to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, detention is arbitrary if it fails to consider individuals' personal circumstances. Mandatory detention therefore violates international law. The United States has signed onto international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibit arbitrary detention.

The vast majority of people who are subject to mandatory detention and expedited removal do not have access to a lawyer. Overall, 84% of immigrant detainees do not have legal representation. In addition, mandatory detention does not allow detainees to appear before an impartial judge. People are routinely deported under mandatory detention without any consideration of their personal situation, such as whether they have young children in the United States or whether they would be in danger if returned to their country of origin.

Here at FCNL, we maintain that mandatory detention and expedited removal must be ended, in order to restore justice to the U.S. immigration system.

In order to restore fairness to the immigration system, we urge Congress to pass a bill that ends these fundamentally unjust policies. Such a bill should give immigration judges discretion to make case-by-case decisions on whether individuals should be detained. Alternatives to detention should be put into place on a national level. In addition, it is important to push back against bills that would expand the criteria for mandatory detention even further.

We also urge the Department of Homeland Security to take immediate steps to ensure that immigrant detainees have access to lawyers and law libraries. Detainees currently face huge obstacles in finding legal assistance because they are held in isolated areas, often without interpreter or translator services, and have limited access to telephones. The next post in this series will address our concerns regarding detention conditions in greater detail.

Justice is denied to immigrants under the mandatory detention and expedited removal policies. There is no place for this kind of injustice in a fair immigration system.

Other posts in this series:

Stories from Detention: Introduction
Rights and Dignity Denied: One Woman's Story
No Human Being is Illegal: Civil Offenses
Inside the Walls: Detention Conditions
In Need of Protection: Vulnerable Populations
There's a Better Way: Alternatives to Detention

No Human Being is Illegal: Civil Offenses

Stories from Detention - Week 2

In conversations on immigration issues, people on many sides of the debate use the term "illegal immigrants." Some choose instead to say "illegal aliens." Even the mainstream media uses these phrases. This choice of language reflects the widely-held notion in the United States that not having proper documentation is a crime.

Get ready for this one: Being an "illegal immigrant" is not a crime.

Violations of immigration laws are civil, not criminal offenses. Let's look at a couple other examples of civil offenses. These include paying for damages in a car accident, going to court for a property dispute, or settling a disagreement about someone's will. These are not criminal offenses, and neither are immigration violations.

What is the punishment for most civil offenses? A fine. What is the punishment for immigrating to the United States without documentation, which is also a civil offense? Arrest, detention, and deportation.

When undocumented immigrants are found to be in violation of immigration laws, they go through a process to see whether they have a right to stay in the United States. Immigrants detained during this process are in non-criminal custody. However, it's easy to get confused on this point, because more than half of the immigrants in detention are held in private prisons or county jails. Some of them are even mixed in with the criminal prison population.

In this video clip, a woman who was detained in an immigration raid on a New Bedford factory gives testimony about her experience. She was separated from her daughter and refused access to a lawyer. Traumatized from the humiliation she experienced, as well as the verbal and physical abuse that she witnessed, she still chooses to share her story.



This woman's experience in the immigration detention system caused her a great deal of pain. Her story raises an important question: What should be the appropriate governmental response to people who enter the U.S. without documentation?

Since most immigration violations are civil rather than criminal offenses, the U.S. government should treat detention as a last resort. Right now, almost all the people accused of violating immigration laws are held in detention centers - no matter what their individual circumstances are. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security should develop community-based alternatives to detention for people, like the woman in this video, who are not a risk to public safety. That way, they could stay together with their families and children as their cases are processed. In addition, Congress should pass a bill on immigration reform that protects people from being treated unfairly in detention.

I will talk in much more detail about these possibilities for reform in the upcoming post, "There's a Better Way: Alternatives to Detention." But these reforms aren't going to happen tomorrow - although they could certainly happen in the next few months. In the meantime, you can help to raise awareness about the immigration detention system.

Language can be a powerful tool. The way that people talk about immigration reflects how they think about immigration. The words that frame these issues actually serve a political purpose - they shape how the discussion on immigration reform advances.

By making a conscious choice not to say "illegal immigrants" and instead to say "undocumented immigrants," you can help to educate your friends, family, and community about how violating immigration laws is not a criminal offense.

Other posts in this series:

Stories from Detention: Introduction
Rights and Dignity Denied: One Woman's Story
Searching for Justice: Mandatory Detention
Inside the Walls: Detention Conditions
In Need of Protection: Vulnerable Populations
There's a Better Way: Alternatives to Detention

Enforcement Activities Rob Immigrants of Dignity

In contrast to my post yesterday about a concerning report from the Brookings Institute, I'd like to direct your attention to some more thoughtful and humane research and advocacy by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR).

NNIRR just published a report, "Guilty By Immigration Status: A Report on U.S. Violations of the Rights of Immigrant Families, Workers, and Communities in 2008." This report examines how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement activities have, not infrequently, violated the human and civil rights of immigrants, their families, and their communities. People swept up in this system are not afforded due process, and those who perpetuate this system are not held accountable for their actions.

This report is accompanied by NNIRR's "2008 Chronology of ICE Raids," which documents the indiscriminate raids that ICE has carried out in worksites and homes over the past year. NNIRR has also put out an excellent resource called the "100 Stories Project," a collection of personal stories of individuals directly affected by ICE raids and other enforcement activities. This project sheds light on an issue that is too often overlooked or dismissed in the broader conversation on comprehensive immigration reform.

One of the stories that I was most struck by:

Annapolis, MD-- Over 100 ICE and county police raid painting company and residences, including U.S. citizens and children (June 30, 2008)
75 heavily armed ICE agents, along with 50 county police officers, raided the company offices of Annapolis Painting Services, Inc and fifteen single-family homes, resulting in the arrest of 51 workers on administrative immigration violations. Agents seized five bank accounts, eleven vehicles and homes as part of a “criminal investigation” into the hiring and harboring of undocumented immigrant workers. However, the company's owners were not arrested. Families of detainees testified to the damage caused by ICE agents who raided their homes, including broken doors and furniture. Veronica Ramos sobbed and her three young children hid under their beds in fear as ICE agents handcuffed and arrested their father, Eduardo Delgado. In another home, ICE agents handcuffed a U.S. citizen and forced him to kneel in front of his four-year-old daughter, while they searched for two others who allegedly worked at the painting.

The fundamental point is this: Immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal offenses. The current DHS enforcement system wrongly criminalizes immigrants and terrorizes communities of color. In addition, this is an issue that affects everyone -- not just immigrants. Once you willingly put up with someone else's rights being taken away, you expose yourself to the possibility that one day soon, yours will be restricted as well.

The United States needs to shift away from the current system and toward a new system that prioritizes keeping communities safe and restoring dignity to all persons, regardless of immigration status.

Brookings Institute Releases Report Calling for Restrictions of Family-Based Immigration

Today, the Brookings Institute released a report titled "Breaking the Immigration Stalemate." The Institute claims that this report brings together people from both sides of the debate on immigration reform. Their website claims that the report identifies areas of agreement where policies could be advanced. However, in reality, the report calls for a nearly complete elimination of family-based immigration. I hope that you find this as concerning as I do.

Recommendations in the report include changing the family immigration system so that only the spouses and children under 21 of green card holders could legally immigrate. Millions of unmarried adult children of green card holders, and adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens, would no longer be eligible for visas.

The report also perpetuates incorrect myths about immigration, including the myth of chain immigration. One quote: "These are difficult and contentious policy choices which directly address critical linkages in the chain migration that results in ever-expanding family-sponsored immigrant networks." This is simply incorrect. It takes so long (between 5 and 22 years) for family members to reunite with their loved ones that it is simply not feasible for chain migration to take place on the scale described by Brookings.

It is neither good policy nor good ethics to separate families. Families are the fundamental unit of this country. Strong families make for stable communities and dynamic local economies. Strong families create support systems for individuals. The solution to the current backlogs in family-based immigration is not to cut out entire populations, making them ineligible for legal immigration -- instead, the solution lies in reforming the visa system for families in order to align it with demand. Legal immigrants in the US should be able to bring their loved ones here to join them, and including the Reuniting Families Act in comprehensive immigration reform would achieve just that.

In Our Community: Immigration News

Wondering what's happened on immigration in the past week? Take a look here at the news on immigration from Monday, September 21 to Monday, September 28.

Time to celebrate! The Associated Press reports that, as of last week, the last families have left the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Texas. Hutto had been a medium-security prison until it was converted in 2006 into an immigration detention facility for families. This facility has been used to detain immigrant families - including pregnant women, young children, and infants - until lawsuits from ACLU and grassroots protests shut it down. Before the lawsuits, conditions in Hutto were appalling. Children were receiving no more than an hour of education a day. Toys and crayons were not allowed in the cells. Guards accustomed to dealing with adults with criminal convictions were now in charge of vulnerable children and their parents. Children reported that the guards would threaten to take away their mothers and transfer them to a different facility if they misbehaved.

To learn more about the human rights abuses at Hutto, watch this video (and see YouTube for parts 2 and 3):



According to ICE, the families held in Hutto have been deported, paroled, or released as their cases on immigration status move through the system. Families apprehended from now on will either be placed under supervision or detained at the much smaller Berks facility in Pennsylvania.

Ever since Lou Dobbs received an award two weeks ago from FAIR, a recognized anti-immigrant hate group, more people have been speaking out about whether he should be removed from CNN. This article describes the efforts of Democracia Ahora, an organization that has just launched a campaign called "Enough is Enough," to get CNN to rein in Dobbs. Democracia Ahora also released a report on Friday based on interviews with 100 Hispanic leaders. The vast majority of these leaders expressed concerns that Dobbs, through his frequent and incendiary remarks about undocumented immigrants, is creating a negative image of Hispanics in the United States.

As mark-ups on the health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee continue into this week, a number of members of Congress are still speaking out on the need to make the health care system reasonably accessible to documented and undocumented immigrants. Twenty-nine Democrats signed on to a letter that strongly urges Congressional leaders to eliminate the five-year waiting period for legal immigrants in the Medicaid program. Representative Mike Honda, the original author of the sign-on letter, also called for the elimination of a provision creating a waiting period for legal immigrants to obtain credits to buy health insurance. A quote from the letter: "The unnecessary and burdensome waiting period has increased racial and ethnic health disparities, and thwarts the goal of health care reform. It is not only fiscally shortsighted, but also arbitrary and fundamentally unfair to deny health care coverage to legal immigrants."

Representative Honda has also written a second letter, which many of the same members of Congress have signed on to, opposing a provision in the Baucus bill in the Senate that bars undocumented immigrants from purchasing non-subsidized health insurance coverage.

The Des Moines Register has printed an article stating that many ICE arrests are not of criminals. This article explains how 67 percent of the people detained this year by Iowa's new ICE unit do not have any criminal background. Instead, they are being held on immigration charges, which are civil, not criminal, offenses. The article also provides some good background information on how ICE has created new programs that give the agency unprecedented abilities to intervene in local communities.

Families of 9/11 Victims Would Get Permanent Status Under Bill

The House Committee on the Judiciary approved a piece of legislation today that would grant permanent status to the spouses and children of undocumented immigrants killed in the 9/11 Twin Tower attack.

Faith Leaders Announce Support for the Reuniting Families Act

Rabbi, Quaker, United Methodists and Eucharistic Minister Call on Congress to Uphold Family Unity

Listen in!

Washington, D.C. – Today, several leaders from diverse faith denominations joined with Congressman Mike Honda at a telephone press conference to announce their support of his bill, the Reuniting Families Act (H.R. 2709). If enacted, this bill would implement critically needed reforms to the U.S. family immigration system and restore family unity as a fundamental principle of U.S. immigration policy. At least 10 mainstream faith organizations support this bill.

“Family is the fundamental unit in society through which individuals are able to grow and experience the love of God,” said Joe Volk, Executive Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “As people of faith, we are given hope by Congressman Honda’s introduction of the Reuniting Families Act. The passage of this bill would offer pragmatic solutions to a broken system and ensure that families are reunited in a timely and humane manner.”

The Reuniting Families Act, introduced on June 4, 2009, reforms the U.S. family immigration system to end the lengthy separation of loved ones, promote family stability, and foster economic growth. There are 5.8 million people caught in the backlog of family immigration cases waiting unconscionable periods of time to reunite with their relatives. The current immigration system has not been updated in 20 years – keeping spouses, children, and their parents separated for years and often decades, despite the fact that the family has played by the rules. The Reuniting Families Act takes important steps toward fixing the broken family immigration system by reducing wait times for legal immigrants and ending discrimination against same-sex, permanent partners and their families.

“The United States is based on family values,” said Congressman Honda. “Upholding family is the American thing to do.”

This sentiment was echoed by other faith leaders during the conference. “The fair treatment of the stranger, the sojourner, the immigrant is a core concern of biblical religions and the Bible itself. This is part of the reason why we who are Christians care so much about this legislation,” said Rev. Dean Snyder of the United Methodist Church. “Keeping spouses, children and their parents separated for years and often decades is unnecessary and unacceptable.”

“For the Jewish community, immigration is a core concern. So rarely have we been accepted openly, yet this is one country that did,” said Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “We came for love of our families, to create for them the life that families deserve. To have an immigration system that tears and keeps families apart is counterproductive.”

Shirley Tan, a Filipina and Eucharistic minister from the Good Shephard Catholic Church in Pacifica, California, also shared her personal story of getting caught in the broken family immigration system. “Our lives were almost perfect until January 28, 2009 when Immigration and Customs agents came to our door. I was handcuffed and taken away like a criminal,” she said. “My partner and my children are all US citizens, yet none of them can petition for me to stay in the United States.”

Rev. Bud Heckman of the World Conference of Religions for Peace concluded by stating, “Why should religious communities speak up about this issue? Because immigrants and their families are also people of faith.”

The faith leaders expressed their hopes that the Reuniting Families Act will be included in a broader comprehensive immigration reform bill this fall.

For information: http://www.honda.house.gov/rfa
Contact: alexandra@fcnl.org/202.903.2513

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The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, DC. Founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), FCNL staff and volunteers work with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from many different races, religions, and cultures to advocate social and economic justice, peace, and good government. FCNL is a nonpartisan 501(c)4 public interest lobby.