The Coalition in Defense of Immigrant Rights (CDIR) firmly stands for and demands amnesty and full rights for all immigrants and for family reunification for more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The CDIR also vehemently oppose President Bush or the White House proposal. Under the new White House plan on immigration reform, it calls for a “Z Visas” valid for three years and renewable indefinitely at cost of ,500.00 each time. To become legal permanent residents with the green card, they will have to return to their home country and apply to re-enter to the legally and pay a $ 10,000 fine.
April 19, 2007
The Bush Temporary Guest Workers Program and the STRIVE Act Are Bad for All Immigrants. Persevere in the Struggle for Full Rights For All Immigrants!
Los Angeles, California -- The Coalition in Defense of Immigrant Rights (CDIR) firmly stands for and demands amnesty and full rights for all immigrants and for family reunification for more than 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
The CDIR also vehemently oppose President Bush or the White House proposal. Under the new White House plan on immigration reform, it calls for a “Z Visas” valid for three years and renewable indefinitely at cost of ,500.00 each time. To become legal permanent residents with the green card, they will have to return to their home country and apply to re-enter to the legally and pay a $ 10,000 fine.
The Bush White House Proposal
The Bush plan was widely condemned by various immigrant rights groups. The proposal as one immigrant stated:”will fleece more money (,000) than what the Coyote smugglers charged immigrants crossing the Mexico-U.S border.”
One of the White House proposals is to make green card available to skilled workers by eliminating family preferences or family petitions. This will deny legal immigrants the right to sponsor or petition their relatives to join them. The proposal practically calls for the elimination of preferential classes for allotment of immigrant visas particularly the fourth preference (adult married brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens) and the first preference (adult unmarried children of U.S citizens. and place caps and waiting periods on parents of U.S. citizens.
For Filipino-Americans and their families and the more than 850,000 Filipino “illegal immigrants", the plan unjustly separates them from their families. Only 70,000 petitions or visas are granted for Filipinos per year. The result is that Filipinos suffer the longest delays among immigrant families in some cases as long as 23 years. Such proposal goes against the grain of the family reunification law that has not been properly implemented. It causes long delays for immigrant families.
Is it not enough that immigrants suffer long delays up to more than 20 years? Why solve the problem by just separating families from their roots and kins? It is evidently contrary to the so-called Bush “core values about families.” That is essentially anti-family because it separates families and against family reunification.
Such anti-immigrant proposals are so harsh that it blatantly discourages immigrants to apply for earned citizenship. They reduce the immigrants to indentured workers. Is this the “compassionate society” that Bush is talking about?
STRIVE Act- a modified guest workers program.
On the other hand. The STRIVE (Security Through Regularization and a Vibrant Economy) Act of 2007 sponsored by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-I) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is a rehash of the modified guest workers program that did not pass in 2006.
The STRIVE Act of 2007 again discriminates against immigrants by its stringent measures: 1) stricter border enforcement; 2) work site inspections; and 3) it will take 11 years long wait for a guest workers program that divides the workers into different tiers, separate families for longer period and for the immigrants to accept harsh terms such as going back to their country of origin, heavy fines, back taxes and security checks.
All immigrants do not and will not receive a fair deal from his kind of racist and anti-immigrant immigration reform overhaul now in Congress. But even with this dirty compromise, the hard core Republicans and their democrat counterparts will not settle for less until they get their enforcement-only dictates in the US Congress. This is even more outrageous than the HR 4437 that people hated and mobilized against in there millions.
The temporary guest workers program is not a path to citizenship. It is a formidable obstacle course to citizenship. It is immoral in the sense that it is a modified Bracer program that imported Mexican labor but refused them residency and citizenship. The so-called “modern” technological ways of checking and monitoring are but a modified way of branding concentration camps victims with numbers during World War II.
It is like the fascist Nazi Germany’s and the Soviet Revisionist internal passports aka biometric cards to an Orwellian nation that the US will become. It makes second-class citizens or a class of temporary guest workers who will be unwanted to become permanent residents and will open them to constant attacks for scapegoat and discrimination.
The CDIR expresses its unequivocal support for all mass action in that demand will not only a humane and fair immigration law for all immigrants but for full rights for all immigrants. We should not settle for less.
There have been precedents in history when the United States opens its border to all immigrants. From 1900 to 1920, more than 14 million immigrants came to the United States without stringent laws and blatant racism such as we see today.
In 1965, the family reunification act and the immigration reform law were passed that let a lot of Asians to enter the United States. In 1986, President Reagan signed an amnesty law that legalized more than five million immigrants. Why can the U.S. government do it now?
The CDIR also expresses support for the majority Latino immigrant movement that led the 2006 immigrant rights upsurge all-over the nation. The April 7 mass action in Los Angeles led by the April 7 Coalition is another signal fire for a new wave of immigrant rights movement for civil rights and human dignity.
The more than 50,000 rallyist in Los Angeles showed the nation that the immigrant rights movement is vibrant and alive and will not settle for crumbs or tender mercies from the oppressors and the ruling class. We are a nation of immigrants, and let it be!
NO to STRIVE Act or the Temporary Guest Worker Program!
Yes to Family Reunification and AMNESTY
No to Prolonged Separation of Families and Immigrant scapegoat!
FULL RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS, LEGALIZATION NOW! #
Original: The Bush Temporary Guest Workers Program and the STRIVE Act Are Bad for All Immigrants.