|
|
| (These articles originally appeared in the Spring 2007 ILSI newsletler) Immigration Update: Promise of Progress, Threat of Divisiveness By Katie Herbert Meyer, ILSI Legal Director 2007 promises to be a year of both vital progress and renewed challenge for the communities ILSI serves. With the recent changes to the U.S. Congress, we once again see real hope for comprehensive immigration reform, which is sorely needed to fix our broken immigration system. Additionally, the federal government recently announced policy changes that will make it easier for certain refugee groups, including those who have been languishing in refugee camps for decades, to finally be resettled in the Untied States. We welcome these developments and remain optimistic that our nation will continue to be a welcoming haven for those most in need of protection.
Yet, we still face many important challenges. Comprehensive immigration reform is still far from assured, and we must continue to champion for its passage. While the federal government is taking important steps to address our nation’s immigration problems, many states are hindering this process by passing anti-immigrant laws. These laws do nothing to address our nation’s problems, but rather serve to incite hate and discrimination against entire groups of people. Rather than promote open dialogue between groups, these laws divide communities along ethnic and racial lines. As a result, anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise. In our own state, many Hispanic immigrants report being unlawfully evicted from their apartments simply because their landlords think they are in the country illegally. The passage of federal immigration reform, which would likely invalidate these discriminatory state laws, is desperately needed to reunify our proud “nation of immigrants.”
Finally, an additional challenge awaits our organization this year. The federal government recently announced its intention to dramatically raise the fees for immigration applications. This fee increase will make it even more difficult for the average family to pay these fees. It will also mean that fewer families will be able to afford an attorney, making our services even more of a necessity. We thank you for your past support and hope you will continue to support us as we proudly serve Missouri’s immigrants.
Missouri Legislators to Consider Bills That Would Harm Immigrants By Angie O'Gorman, President, ILSI Board of Directors Ideology has replaced analysis, and fact given way to fiction when it comes to legislative debate about immigrant rights reform in Missouri.
Republicans on the House Interim Committee on Immigration reported last year that abortions caused undocumented employment in the state. Abortions, they argued, had resulted in insufficient numbers of Missouri workers.
This year, Sen. Chris Koster, state Attorney General hopeful, is arguing that there are 140,000 undocumented immigrants in Missouri, and 140,000 unemployed Missourians, suggesting that the unemployed Missourians would all have jobs if the undocumented immigrants leave. This convoluted logic gives a glimpse into the quality of policy debate.
The whiff and stench of hate politics drummed up for political purposes pervades the discussion. I asked Sen. Chris Koster, sponsor of SB 348, The Missouri Omnibus Immigration Act, if he was concerned about the effect of hate politics on the social fabric of the state. “All policies,” he said, “have their down-sides.”
Bills currently pending in Jefferson City would require employers to check the immigration status of job applicants with a national database known to be unreliable; a bureaucracy would be created to penalize Missouri institutions of higher education for enrolling undocumented students. Publicly supported health care, including pre-natal care, would be inaccessible, and on and on. Most bills portray the undocumented as criminals, tax burdens or worse.
Most undocumented people in the state have citizen spouses, parents or children. The employees, students, and pregnant women who stand to be penalized by such legislation are our family members. They may not yet be legal but they have an ethical right to resist years of separation from their citizen family members while Immigration plods through bureaucratic backlogs.
Undocumented immigration is a systemic problem solvable by reforming our national immigration laws and trade policies. We can’t fix these broken systems one immigrant at a time. And we can’t risk thousands of broken Missouri families, or a social fabric torn by hate, in the process.
There are 17 immigration bills pending in Jefferson City that will hurt our immigrant neighbors and family members. Find a bill that pulls at your passion and get involved to ensure reason will rule over frenzy. To receive ongoing updates of pending immigration-related state legislation, please contact ILSI board member Joan Suarez at immigrantrights@stl-jwj.org.
| |
|