Washington, DC – Domingo Garcia, National President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), issued the following statement Thursday on the Administration’s plan for an overhaul of the U.S. immigration policy:

“For months, LULAC in good faith has attempted to find a bipartisan solution to immigration reform. Our organization even went to the White House and met with Mr. Jared Kushner, Special Advisor to President Trump and we remained hopeful that together, we could find a way forward. Instead, this Administration has chosen to hide behind the facade of an improved immigration plan that is politically expedient and fuels the xenophobia frenzy of those who clamor Latino immigrants and refugees are not welcome here. Yet, the so-called “new requirements” announced by the President ignore our nation’s real labor needs now and in the future and leave unanswered the questions from farmers, business owners and contractors asking who will harvest our food, work in our factories and build our homes?

As importantly, the fact that the President’s plan does not include a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and protection for TPS recipients is a political non-starter which we strongly oppose. Reforms to our asylum laws must include legislation that brings legal relief to Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants. We will organize, we will mobilize and we will take peaceful non-violent united action with millions more Americans against policies which undermine our values as a nation of immigrants and a country which welcomes all refugees irrespective of their academic or technical pedigree.

LULAC also opposes anti-family legislation that will separate parents from children, husbands from wives and siblings from one another. It is unacceptable and a betrayal of the fundamental values of our founders to make wholesale changes to the law that prohibit certain U.S. residents and citizens from reuniting with their loved ones. Perhaps President Trump should remember how his own wife’s family benefitted from these same immigration provisions. We must support and keep families together.

Fair-minded Americans will see that this proposed immigration plan is nothing more than the act of politicians with a closed-door mentality and that these measures seek to appease those who want nothing more than to increase anti-immigrant law enforcement. This is not what the Statue of Liberty stands for and neither is it what our great country has traditionally represented before the world.”

Reposted from the Washington Examiner

President Trump skipped for the third year a celebration of Cinco de Mayo on the White House grounds, leaving the Mexican ambassador with a group of mid-level administration officials instead.

At the event, Ambassador Martha Bárcena urged ratification of the USMCA trade deal, but he was left without a senior U.S. counterpart as White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney canceled at the last minute.

Trump has given far less fanfare to Cinco de Mayo than his recent predecessors. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush hosted elaborate parties in the Rose Garden and East Room of the White House.

In 2017, Vice President Mike Pence hosted a celebration in the Indian Treaty Room. A low-key event was also held last year.

In both 2017 and 2018, Trump issued statements noting the date. “Today, we honor the heritage of our neighbors to the south, and we celebrate the significant contributions of Mexican Americans to the United States,” he said last year.

To commemorate the holiday, an event billed as a USMCA briefing was held in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which overlooks the White House, followed by a closed-press lunch buffet.

Bárcena advocated for “an agile and flexible border” that supports “the fluid crossings of peoples” and goods, while speaking of building a “very competitive region.”

“Look at the automotive sector of North America. One piece of a car can cross the border up to eight times … before the car is finally assembled,” she said. “That’s why we need an agile and flexible border. A border that guarantees security, but also that guarantees the fluid crossings of peoples, goods and services, and merchandises.”

Bárcena said Democrats in Congress should have no concerns about Mexico enforcing new labor standards that are intended to prevent the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by raising Mexican wages. She noted the Mexican Congress this week approved legislation making it easier for workers to unionize.

“Texas’s exports to Mexico are larger than all U.S. exports to Japan and India combined,” she said. “The livelihood of 5 million Americans is on the line,” she added, citing a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report. “That is basically every single person living in Alabama right now.”

Journalists who covered the USMCA briefing were escorted out of the room during a panel conversation that included Tim Pataki, director of of the White House Office of Public Liaison, who noted historically low Hispanic American unemployment.

Cinco de Mayo marks Mexico’s 1862 victory over invading French Emperor Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla. Though victorious, the French later imposed Maximilian I, an Austrian royal who ruled Mexico as emperor from 1864-1867, before being overthrown and executed at age 34.

“Thanks to the social and effective labor rights agenda of President Lopez Obrador, don’t have any doubt that we will enforce these labor reforms,” she said. “These should allay all the fears of our Democrat friends in Congress.”

Bárcena said passage of USMCA was important to the U.S., too.