Important Notice about 3 amendments to the Immigration Bill in the Senate

Important Notice about certian amendments to the Immigration Bill in the Senate

IF YOU OPPOSE THESE YOU NEED TO GET ON THE PHONE TO SENATE OFFICES TO ASK YOUR SENATORS TO OPPOSE THESE AMENDMENTS:
1-800-882-2005 for Spanish
1-800-417-7666 for English

Coleman – introduced amendment prohibiting local jurisdictions
from non-collaboration with immigration authorities.
Senator Coleman (R-MN) has filed an amendment that would force cities
and police departments to put immigration law enforcement above
protecting the health and safety of their communities. Coleman 1158
would require state and local employees-including police and health and
safety workers-to inquire about the immigration status of those they
serve if there is “probable cause” to believe the individual being
questioned is undocumented. See the attached talking points for more
details on what’s wrong with this bill and why we need to stop its
passage.

What the amendment would do:

Coleman 1158 would outlaw state and local policies that prevent their employees””including police and health and safety workers””from inquiring about the immigration status of those they serve if there is “probable cause” to believe the individual being questioned is undocumented.

There is no exception where such policies are necessary to protect the health and safety or promote the welfare of the community.

Here’s what’s wrong with this amendment:

• Many cities, counties and police departments have decided that it’s a matter of public health and safety NOT to ask about immigration status when people report crimes, or have been the victims of domestic abuse, or go to the hospital seeking emergency medical care.
• That’s why they have passed local laws and set policies limiting when police and city and county employees can ask people to prove their immigration status.
• The police understand that community policing depends on residents who will cooperate with police.
• They understand that communities are hurt when their residents are afraid that their immigration status will be questioned when they seek refuge at a domestic violence shelter or ask the police for help in escaping an abusive spouse..
• These aren’t sanctuary ordinances, they are public health and safety ordinances.
• The Coleman amendment will run roughshod over these policies, saying that Congress knows better than local governments what best protects their residents.
• This amendment will encourage racial profiling. People who look or sound foreign will be the ones whose citizenship or immigration status will be questioned.
• This amendment asks public hospital workers, teachers, police, social workers and all public employees to decide when there is probable cause to believe someone does not have lawful immigration status. That means treating anyone who looks or sounds foreign with suspicion. That’s wrong.

Cornyn – state and local police amendment. Makes illegal use
of SSN a retroactive crime, for which you can be deported
The amendment makes illegal entry or reentry an aggravated felony, even
if such sentence is completely suspended! This means that individuals
who crossed the border illegally in the past and done jail time could be
convicted of an aggravated felony, subjected to mandatory detention and
permanent banishment from the U.S. See the attached talking points for
more details on what’s wrong with this bill and why we need to demand
that our senators vote no.

Significantly Expands the class of Aggravated Felony Crimes and MAKES THEM RETROACTIVE

• Makes illegal entry or reentry an aggravated felony if sentenced to 1 year or more in jail, even if such sentence is completely suspended! This means that individuals who crossed the border illegally in the past could be convicted of an aggravated felony, subjected to mandatory detention and permanent banishment from the U.S.
• Revises the definition by adding language that would bootstrap a crime into aggravated felony status even if the length of imprisonment for the offense is based on recidivist or other enhancements.
• Expands aggravated felony definition to encompass convictions for failing to register as a sex offender and for participating in criminal street gangs. The criminal street gang definition included in the bill is already incredibly over broad in that it would allow DHS to call “a club of 5 or more people’ a gang. Already this bill makes mere association with a gang a ground of inadmissibility and deportability. Making this broad crime an aggravated felony will just result in less discretion for judges””it will result in more mandatory detention and deportation.
• Makes a third conviction for DUI an aggravated felony if sentenced to at least one year, even if such sentence is suspended!
• The above changes are retroactive, encompassing any act that takes place on, before, or after enactment.

Denies lawful permanent residents the opportunity to become U.S. citizens based on secret evidence:

• This amendment gives the AG unreviewable discretion to use secret evidence to determine if an alien is “described in’ the national security exclusions within immigration law.
• A person applying for naturalization could have her application denied and she would never know the reason for the denial.
• So if a lawful permanent resident was giving money for Tsunami relief and accidentally gave money to a charity controlled by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, then that person could be denied citizenship on the basis of secret evidence and there would be no review in the courts.
• In sum, it allows deportations based on the unreviewable determination by executive branch that a person lacks “good moral character”; determinations can be made based on secret evidence that the person cannot even see let alone challenge.

These provisions are retroactive:

• Retroactivity is antithetical to core American values. What could be more unfair than changing the rules in the middle of the game? This is why it is unconstitutional in criminal law and strongly objectionable in a context like immigration law where such changes can have profound life-altering consequences.
• Why would we want to repeat the mistakes of IIRAIRA? Retroactivity in that law led to incredible hardship for thousands of good people and had the most strident immigration hard-liners questioning whether the laws had gone too far.
• Retroactivity was eliminated from all of these provisions during Judiciary Committee markup, but it has reemerged in the most recent Republican draft.

Makes aggravated felonies a ground of inadmissibility

• This section expands the grounds of inadmissibility by including aggravated felonies, crimes related to firearms offenses, and domestic violence. One of the worst parts of this amendment is that the aggravated felony inadmissibility category is not waivable.1
• The aggravated felony bar is already incredibly over broad. Congress created the term “aggravated felony” in 1988 to cover truly serious crimes such as murder and drug trafficking. Since 1988, Congress has expanded the aggravated felony definition many times. The current definition is now so expansive that it includes first-time simple misdemeanor offenses with little or no jail time. When the government designates a noncitizen as an “aggravated felon” it carries the most drastic immigration consequences, including mandatory deportation, mandatory detention, minimal due process safeguards and disqualification from almost all immigration benefits. This has resulted in tens of thousands of noncitizens now being classified as aggravated felons under immigration law and, as such, suffering the harshest consequences.
• Under this law, there would be no discretion to waive application of this provision. So individuals who are lawful permanent residents with strong equities such as military service, US citizen children or humanitarian considerations could not receive a waiver if they were convicted of an aggravated felony. So for example, a returning lawful permanent resident could be found inadmissible based on a twenty-year old “aggravated felony’ of shop-lifting and DHS would have no discretion to weigh the person’s crime against the harsh punishment of permanent banishment from the U.S.
• The provision regarding domestic violence crimes should require a conviction in order for a person to be found inadmissible. This provision does not require a conviction but merely an admission of guilt. A cornerstone of due process protections has been that that the government should prove that the law that the person was convicted of violating is sufficiently similar to the deportation ground at issue. A person should not be found inadmissible based upon what she was alleged to have done, but rather, based upon what she was actually convicted of doing. This requirement recognized that important rights and protections exist in the criminal justice system – such as the concept of innocent until proven guilty.

Dramatically expands deportability grounds to include social security fraud

• Adds new grounds of deportability for convictions relating to social security account numbers or social security cards and convictions relating to identity fraud. As with virtually all of the provisions in this amendment, this expansion is retroactive so that acts that occurred before the date of enactment would become grounds for removal.
• Significantly, this provision could place individuals applying for legalization in a catch-22 situation. They come forward and register, admit to having used a fake social security card to work in the U.S., only to be prosecuted by an overzealous AUSA or one working in concert with DHS to selectively target certain applicants. The individual takes a guilty plea in response to the prosecution and then under this change is subject to removal because of conduct that occurred prior to enactment, conduct that was fundamentally incident to his undocumented status.
• Potential impact of making many undocumented workers who have been convicted of either of these crimes deportable. We know that because of the failed employer sanctions, undocumented workers have had no choice but to buy and use false documents and SSNs in order to work, earn a livelihood and support a family.
• Given ICE’s new interior enforcement strategy whereby the agency is targeting “criminal identity theft” and as we have seen, rounding up thousands of undocumented workers during worksite enforcement actions under the guise of going after identity thieves, the potential impact of this amendment could be significant.
• In the December 2006 Swift raids, for example, we know that workers were charged with criminal misuse of an SSN under 42 USC 408. (Using another person’s SSN or a false SSN for work, for example, is a felony under 42 USC 408 and punishable by fine or imprisonment of up to 5 years or both.)
• Also, because the amendment is Retroactive and would apply even to those applying for admission after the date of enactment – the potential exists for people to be charged and convicted upon coming forward to apply for legalization – unless a waiver is put in the legalization section.

Expands Qualifying Crimes for Definition of Criminal Gang

• Although the criminal gang definition is already overbroad, these changes do not make it much worse.

DRAMATICALLY limits who is eligible for the legalization program. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS

• Makes anyone who is inadmissible under 212(a) ineligible for the legalization program. This is virtually the ENTIRE undocumented population.
• Ineligible if unlawfully present for one year or more and subsequently reentered and no waiver available! Again, HUGE PORTION OF THE UNDOCUMENTED POPULATION
• Anyone “described in’ the aggravated felony definition or who engaged in a high speed flight at a border checkpoint or is “described in’ a national security ground is not eligible.
• Anyone “described in’ the new passport and document fraud provisions would be ineligible. There is an extremely limited waiver for LPRs (who wouldn’t need legalization anyway). This could have a HUGE impact on the legalizing population as well.
• Also includes a “technical” fix””a person applying for a z visa would have to show good moral character for the past three years.

The “Good” Amendment – Clinton Menendez Hagel Amendment, which
will amend the “immediate relative” category for family-visa petitions
to include minor children and spouses of lawful permanent residents

Purpose: To modify the deadline for family backlog reduction

Right now, there is a family backlog of people that have applied for lawful permanent residence. Currently, the compromise legislation will clear this backlog under our existing family and employer based system, but only for those who submitted their applications before May 1, 2005. Those who applied on or after May 1, 2005 would not be part of this backlog elimination and would have to wait an additional eight years until they would be eligible to compete for green cards with Z visa holders and others under the new merit-based point system.

As a result, an estimated 833,000 people who have played by the rules and applied after that date will not be cleared as part of the family backlog and will lose their chance to immigrate under current rules. They will effectively be punished for following the rules and will have to compete with those that are in an undocumented status or those who have yet to apply for lawful permanent residence.

The Menendez amendment would change the “cut-off” date for legal immigrant applicants who would otherwise be handled under the backlog reduction part of the bill from May 1, 2005 to January 1, 2007, which is the same cut-off date that is currently set for the legalization of the undocumented immigrants. It would also add 110,000 green cards a year to ensure that we don’t start creating a new backlog or cause the eight year deadline for clearing the family backlog to slip by a few years.

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In all fairness, I will state that I got this from someone who works with SEIU whether or not you want to consider this Labor Union pro or anti is your choice. I also know people who read this site that would find this info very useful.

Posted on: May 24th, 2007
Curation from Tomás
Filed Under: 1. Hispanic News, Immigration, Politics, Tomás' Picks

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