Immigration and the 2020 Election
From the desk of Zenobia Lai, HILSC Executive Director
This has been a year like no other.
The world has been besieged by the novel Corona virus
Many lives have been upended.
This has also been a stressful election season.
Come what may,
WE PERSIST.
- Restore our role as the lead humanitarian nation of the world
- Reset the annual refugee resettlement quota to a minimum of 120,000
- War, climate change, civil strife, famine, & disease have doubled the number of people displaced from their home in the past decade to nearly 80 million people, the United States should step up to give refugees a home
- Instead of cutting the number of refugees to resettle to a 40-year low of 15,000 for FY2021, the U.S. should match its pace set in 1980 to resettle 220,000 refugees
- Honor the UNHCR vetting process
- Allow asylum filing at the border, no more unlawful metering or “Remain in Mexico”
- Restore established law protecting victims of targeted violence and domestic abuse
- Return American asylum law in comport with international law and codify protections for persons fleeing from modern crises
- Remove unreasonable time-line for filing asylum
- Reunite migrant children taken from their families at the border
- Confer trafficking victim protections to separated children and their families under the T visa program
- Protect child victims of abuse, neglect and abandonment, give them deferred action pending visa availability for special immigrant juvenile status
- Dismantle the child detention system
- Welcome long-term residents into the American family
- Create a pathway to citizenship for DREAMERS
- Advance the date for registry, allow long-term residents to become permanent residents
- Allow holders of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to adjust to lawful permanent residents
- Confer immigration status to the tens of thousands of essential workers who:
- Take care of those sickened by COVID-19 and other illnesses and diseases
- Harvest fruits and vegetables, tend the livestock, cut and pack meat, trim the overgrowth
- Build homes and repair houses, critical infrastructures, roads, and office towers
- Stock supermarkets, staff check-out lines and sanitize shopping carts
- Pick up trash, provide critical social and legal services
- Immigration infractions are civil violations, stop criminalizing immigrants
- No more private prison expansion
- Close all facilities
- Investigate all deaths and human rights violations in immigration detention
- Cut the detention and deportation pipeline
- Implement community-based measures
- No human being is “alien”
- Stop pitching “us versus them” battles, remove all references of “alien” from the Immigration and Nationality Act
- Stop border wall construction
- Divest from Customs and Border Protection, invest in border communities, provide access to healthcare, quality education, and basic needs
- Put justice back in the immigration system
- Restore the Office of Legal Access in the Executive Office of Immigration Review
- Reunite the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with the Department of Justice
- Re-institute neutral hiring process for Immigration Judges
- It’s time for comprehensive immigration reform to restore civility, humanity and reason to our immigration system
- Reverse enforcement-only immigration policy
- Reward long-term residency
- Remove unlawful presence bar
- Reward work
- Reinvigorate employment-based and family-based immigration systems