| Nation’s Largest & Oldest Civil Rights Organization Calls Trump Proposal a Betrayal of America’s Values |
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.”
