House Judiciary Committee Still Playing Cruel Games with Immigration

The House Judiciary Committee will mark-up four punitive, one-sided immigration bills this week. The four bills revive previously-failed bills. If they were to pass, they would deepen the problems of our broken immigration system. They are: Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC) draconian interior enforcement “SAFE Act” from last Congress, renamed the “Michael Davis, Jr. in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act” (H.R. 1148); Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) “Legal Workforce Act, (H.R. 1147)” which requires all employers to use the E-verify system for checking immigration status; Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) “Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act of 2015” (H.R. 1153), which would gravely harm asylum seekers, survivors of domestic violence and trafficking, military members, and abused neglected or abandoned children; and Rep. John Carter’s (R-TX) ironically named, “Protection of Children Act of 2015” (H.R. 1149), which would lower due process standards for all unaccompanied children and expedite their removal from the US.

Washington, DC – The House Judiciary Committee will mark-up four punitive, one-sided immigration bills this week. The four bills revive previously-failed bills. If they were to pass, they would deepen the problems of our broken immigration system. They are: Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC) draconian interior enforcement “SAFE Act” from last Congress, renamed the “Michael Davis, Jr. in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act” (H.R. 1148); Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) “Legal Workforce Act, (H.R. 1147)” which requires all employers to use the E-verify system for checking immigration status; Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-UT) “Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act of 2015” (H.R. 1153), which would gravely harm asylum seekers, survivors of domestic violence and trafficking, military members, and abused neglected or abandoned children; and Rep. John Carter’s (R-TX) ironically named, “Protection of Children Act of 2015” (H.R. 1149), which would lower due process standards for all unaccompanied children and expedite their removal from the US.

“Imposing mandatory E-verify and assigning local law enforcement to apply immigration law would increase fear and drive undocumented farmworkers – about 1.2 million farm and ranch workers — further into the underground economy and the margins of society.,” said Bruce Goldstein, President of Farmworker Justice. These bills would further destabilize the farm labor force and our food system. .”

“Inhumane enforcement-only approaches to immigration don’t work.. No one seriously believes that we will or should deport 11 million undocumented people,” Goldstein continued. “The House Judiciary Committee should stop wasting time and money on political posturing and instead work towards a compromise solution to fix our immigration system, which must include a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the US.”