Immigrant Rights Foundation

Home

Current Discrimination

About Amnesty

Comprehensive Reform

Op-Eds

Member Stories

Directors

Join us

Take Action

Donate

Immigrant Dreams

Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette
December 23, 2008


Sylvia Smith’s column “Lugar’s bill aids immigrant children” (Dec. 7) supported the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), which would give amnesty to college-age illegal aliens.

What we want to know is, when will The Journal Gazette and Congress consider the dreams of legal immigrants and their children?

What about the dreams of the millions of legal immigrants made to wait up to 22 years overseas by the U.S. government before they are allowed into the U.S.? Every year, thousands of them die before their dream of becoming a U.S. resident is realized. The long waiting times also cause legal immigrant children in the queue overseas to lose the opportunity for an education in America, an opportunity that the DREAM Act unfairly would bestow only on the children of illegal aliens. When will Congress work to grant legal immigrant children their dreams before they age out or their parents die?

What about the dreams of the many thousands of English-speaking orphans overseas who dream of living in the U.S. and becoming an American? When will The Journal Gazette and Congress consider their dreams?

What about the dreams of the many thousands of foreign students with IQs of 150 or higher who graduate from high school every year? Their dream is to go to the best universities in the world, which are here in the U.S., but they cannot afford to pay the out-of-country tuition rate. What of their dreams?

What about the dream of President John F. Kennedy, who opposed an immigration system that “discriminates among applicants for admission to the United States on the basis of accident of birth”? Yet this is exactly what the DREAM Act does – it discriminates on the basis of accident of birth. The majority of the DREAM Act recipients are in the U.S. due to their being born in Mexico and Latin America, whose close proximity makes it much easier for them to illegally enter.

When will The Journal Gazette and Congress consider the dreams of legal immigrants and those not only in the U.S. but around the world who want an equal-opportunity immigration system? What of their dreams?

JEAN BAPTISTE TRUONG
TONY DOLZ
SUE STANNARD 
Directors, Immigrant Rights Foundation

http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081223/EDIT09/812230388


A pro-illegal alien bias

By TONY DOLZ
Washington Times
November 6, 2007

The Democratic Party supports discrimination by condoning illegal migration and amnesty for illegal aliens.

These policies discriminate based on origin because 80 percent of illegal aliens are from Latin America, yet Latin Americans represent only 8 percent of the world"s population. This means Latin Americans benefit from illegal migration and amnesty for illegal aliens at a rate 30 times greater than non-Latin Americans.
Amazingly, this is the same party that in 1965 changed U.S. immigration law to "end immigration discrimination." In 1963, President Kennedy submitted legislation that would become the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, explaining it was for:

The "Elimination of Discrimination Based on National Origins

... The use of a national origins system is without basis in either logic or reason. ... such a system is an anachronism, for it discriminates among applicants for admission into the United States on the basis of accident of birth."

President Kennedy also said:

Natives of no one country should receive over 10 percent of the total quota Numbers authorized in any one year. This will insure that the pattern of immigration is not distorted by excessive demand from any one country.

Unfortunately although President Kennedy's legislation was enacted into law, immigration discrimination has not ended, only the countries involved have changed. Mexicans account for about 32 percent of recent U.S. legal immigrants and legalized illegal aliens and 80 percent of illegal aliens. Other Latin American countries also have high percentages compared to their world population percentage. These percentages are so high because of past illegal alien amnesties and continued allowance of illegal migration. If another illegal alien amnesty was passed, these percentages for Mexico and other Latin American countries would further increase.
The Heritage Foundation has estimated that if the current 30 million (number from research by Bear and Stearns, the Heritage Foundation and the California for Immigration Stabilization) illegal aliens in the country now are given amnesty, that number, with family unification, would grow to 100 million in the coming decades.

While Democrats claim their amnesty schemes send illegal aliens to the back of the immigration line, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, illegal aliens are already at the front of the line.

Compared to legal immigrants waiting for a visa overseas, most illegal aliens have a U.S.-based paying job, access to U.S. health care and education, plus their babies born here are granted automatic U.S. Citizenship and all its benefits. The only way for illegal aliens to be at the back of the immigrant visa line is for them to return to their country of origin and apply at the U.S. Embassy there like everyone else in the world does, including law-abiding citizens of their own countries.

It should also be noted that the Democratic Party ignores the problems created for legal immigrants by illegal alien amnesties. Past amnesties for illegal aliens have almost tripled the waiting times for family unification of legal immigrants. Since the waiting times are now many years long, every year thousands of legal immigrants die while waiting for their green cards overseas, without ever stepping foot in the U.S.A.

The Democratic Party supports this discrimination because it is an easy way for them to replace some of their current constituents who are not reproducing, groups such as homosexuals and radical feminists who have very low birthrates.

Poor, unhealthy and illiterate illegal aliens who receive amnesty are more likely to become Democratic constituents as they would require many government assistance programs. Increasing legal immigration is not as beneficial for the Democratic Party as illegal immigration and amnesty because it would not swell their numbers as massively or as quickly as granting amnesty to 30 million illegal aliens already here. Whereas legal immigration is about 1.2 million yearly, Bear and Stearns has estimated illegal immigration at about 2 million to 2.5 million annually. Unlike the illegal aliens who would typically lean toward the Democratic Party, legal immigrants are, as demonstrated by their respect of our borders and laws, law-abiding and far more self-reliant and less likely to depend on tax-paid social assistance.

All political parties have from time to time supported discriminatory immigration policies. However in our era, it is clear the Democratic Party does not support equal opportunity immigration. Their support for amnesty, the Dream Act, the Agriculture Bill (Agriculture cheap labor guest worker programs); and open borders in general shows they support immigration discrimination as vigorously as ever.

Poll after poll indicates a supermajority of more than 70 percent opposes amnesty in any form. Twice in one year the Democratic Party and handful of Republicans in the Senate introduced amnesty bills but both times failed to gain support due to massive opposition from their constituencies.

Since corporate employers of millions of illegal aliens continue to weigh in with their lobbying and influencing of our elected officials we now see a new approach — piecemeal instead of general amnesty.

One such bill on the floor just now is Senate Bill 2205, the so called Dream Act. The strategy from the Democratic Party appears to be to break the dam one stone at a time until 30 million or more illegal aliens break loose in the end.

New York state Gov. Eliot Spitzer has received a huge figurative slap in the face. He degraded the security of the New York state driver"s license by ordering through an Executive Order (devoid of public or legislative input) which could potentially allow up to a million illegal aliens in the state to vote Democratic in coming elections. This is made possible by the 1993 Motor Voter Act which allows any illegal alien who gets a driver"s license to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship.

The problem is that 72 percent of New Yorkers, in the latest poll, oppose the governor"s maneuver to secure hundreds of thousands of illegal votes in coming elections. Ironically, the Democratic elected representatives and the party in New York that stand to gain the most from this illegal voting have turned against Mr. Spitzer with a fury. The Party fears the backlash from the public to the governor"s discriminatory immigration policy and the dishonest and illegal way he attempted to gain votes for the Democrats.

It is very dangerous at this time to continue the Democratic policy of discrimination in immigration policy. The public simply will not stand for it any more.

So not only does the Democratic Party support discrimination, it also supports rewarding lawbreakers and penalizing the law-abiding foreigners in order to increase their constituency. Talk about a culture of corruption and hypocrisy.

 




End immigration discrimination

San Francisco Chronicle
James P. Driscoll
Thursday, June 28, 2007

U.S. immigration practices are biased. We maintain a double standard that gives immigrants who enter illegally better opportunities than those who obey our laws.

Legal immigration requires complex bureaucratic procedures and long waits, with no guarantee of success at the end. Illegal immigration merely involves crossing the porous U.S. border without getting caught.

We impose tight security on all who enter through our airports. Security along U.S. land borders, however, remains notoriously lax. Mexicans and Central Americans can readily slip across our southern border and millions have. But for most Asians and Africans, the only practical option is legal entry by air. Lax land enforcement opens broad immigration channels for Latin Americans that are inaccessible to Asians and Africans.

Asians and Africans have a more urgent need to immigrate because of noneconomic pressures than Latin Americans, whose homelands are comparatively wealthier, freer and less populated. For example, 5 million Burmese have fled their country’s oppressive regime to live in abject poverty as despised aliens in neighboring countries such as Thailand. Many speak English and would like to immigrate here, but biased U.S. immigration policy practices do not give them a fair chance. The same story holds for tens of millions of other Asians and Africans facing political, religious and ethnic persecution. We admit few of them as legal immigrants; instead, we leave our back door ajar for multitudes of illegal immigrants seeking not freedom but only higher wages.

The U.S. record of discrimination against Asian and African immigrants is long and shameful. In the 19th century, Chinese were brought in to build our railroads and then shot and buried in mass graves. For decades the Chinese Exclusion and the National Origins acts deemed Asian immigrants “racially undesirable” and severely restricted their numbers, while imposing no limits on Latin Americans.

With African immigrants, our record is appalling. Millions were forcibly transported here to toil as plantation slaves. Early in the 20th century, we enacted a quota system that virtually barred Africans and favored Northern Europeans. After 1965, as demand for cheap labor rose, we replaced the quotas with policies and practices that favor Latin Americans. Today, eager for low cost labor and tacitly preferring illegal browns to legal blacks, we still decline to give African workers an equal opportunity to immigrate.

To favor people who enter by breaking our laws over people who aspire to become law-abiding U.S. citizens is manifest folly. To discriminate against Asian and African immigrants by favoring Latinos is racist and a betrayal of America’s unifying values.

Immigration discrimination is wrong: It should be illegal. Equal protection of the law, which bans racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination, ought to apply to those seeking a legal path to citizenship, not just current citizens. Equal protection of the law is not a quirk of the Constitution; it is a self-evident human right. Congress and the courts have a moral obligation to end government practices that foster de facto racial, religious and ethnic discrimination. To be just and fair to all, and safeguard against terrorism, we must secure our land borders as diligently as we secure entry by air.

Notwithstanding, the contribution of immigrants to America’s creativity and economic growth is undeniable, as is the need for more selective legal immigration. Once America’s immigration challenges are honestly assessed, we can recognize the necessary reforms: 1) increase legal immigration and give it flexibility to respond to our economy’s changing needs; 2) select immigrants by ability to contribute and in order to relieve severe hardship and oppression; 3) minimize illegal immigration by improving land border security and curbing employment incentives; 4) give members of all races and ethnic groups equal opportunity to become American citizens.

If Congress and the president are serious about immigration reform, ending immigration discrimination should top their reform agendas. Far from being genuine reforms, the current “comprehensive” proposals extend and legalize racially biased practices.

Ending discrimination is the right and moral thing to do: that is sufficient reason to do it. It will also have crucial benefits. We will gain a more balanced selection of immigrants who will assimilate more readily and better reflect the rich variety of global culture. Such diversity will strengthen our economy and society by broadening our talent pool. Most important, America will at last realize the full meaning of “all men are created equal” by applying it to immigrants.

James P. Driscoll, a long time AIDS activist in San Francisco and Washington, served on the International Committee of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Council. He arrived at these concerns after working with international AIDS issues.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/06/28/EDG6QQ4T6P1.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle




Immigrant Rights Foundation
23219 Stringtown Rd. #225
Clarksburg MD 20871
info@immigrantrightsfoundation.org