May Day: Immigrants and Allies to Rally for Driving Privilege Restoration and Humane Immigration Reform

MEDIA ADVISORY
April 28, 2008

CONTACT:
Aeryca Steinbauer : (503) 984-6816
Erik Sorensen: (503) 488-0263

Immigrants and Allies to Rally for Driving Privilege Restoration and Just and Humane Immigration Reform

Salem, Ore-This Thursday, immigrants, social justice advocates, people of faith, and organized labor will gather in Salem for a day of action and call on elected leaders to reject anti-immigrant proposals at the national, state and local level.

What: MAYDAY MARCH FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

Who: Immigrants, social justice advocates, people of faith and labor unions

When: Thursday, May 1st, 2007, 11:00AM-3:00PM

Where: Oregon State Capitol 900 Court St. NE, Salem, OR

As national and local candidates jockey to prove who is most anti-immigrant, the immigrant community demands a solution for the 12 million undocumented immigrant workers and families who are living in the shadows. We renew our call for just reform, a stop to the criminalization of immigrants and a rejection of all anti-immigrant proposals. We issue calls to the following elected leaders:

Oregon Legislature: Restore Oregon Driving Privileges to ALL Oregon residents

Bush Administration: Stop Workplace Raids and Deportations

New Administration: Provide leadership for just and humane immigration reform in the first 100 days of the new Presidency

Congress: Oppose Anti-immigrant Legislation like the SAVE Act and stop the militarization of U.S. borders

We call on ALL immigrant rights, social justice and labor rights advocates to join us in Salem this May Day (Thursday, May 1st, 2008) to continue building the alliance between the immigrants' rights movement, social justice movement, and the workers' rights movement.

The Rally will begin at 12 noon at the State Capitol (900 Court St. NE, Salem) with a March to follow around 1 pm. Contact: Aeryca Steinbauer at (503) 984-6816 for more information.

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Organizations Voice Opposition to Legislation Detaining Immigrant Children

OVER 80 ORGANIZATIONS JOIN IN OPPOSITION TO LEGISLATION DETAINING IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

Contact: Christopher Spina
(202) 657-0677
(202) 674-2450 (mobile)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, in a letter to the House of Representatives, over 80 federal, state, and local organizations from across the nation expressed their strong opposition to the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act (H.R. 4088) of 2008, legislation that explicitly calls for the creation of a family detention facility that will result in the “incarceration” of immigrant children. The letter was spearheaded by First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization.

The SAVE Act disregards recommendations repeatedly made by Congress that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should “release families or use alternatives to detention…whenever possible.” Instead, the SAVE Act encourages the practice of detaining innocent children who are often caught in the crossfire of U.S. immigration policy, holding them in facilities that resemble prisons instead of nurturing home environments.

Recently, the Act was subject to a discharge petition, a procedural maneuver which, if a simple majority 218 Representatives sign a petition in support of the bill, shall allow the legislation to bypass the committee process and be placed on the House floor for a vote, despite objections by House leadership. Currently, the petition has over 150 signatures. The Act was introduced by Reps. Heath Shuler (D-NC), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), and Tom Tancredo (R-CO).

“The outpouring of opposition to this bill should send one message to the House of Representatives – placing children in prison-like settings is not who we are as a nation and we will not sit idly by while legislation that would do so is slipped onto the House floor through procedural maneuvers,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus. “The sad fact is this bill calls for the creation of a detention facility modeled after the controversial T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, which has been found to be an ‘inappropriate and disturbing setting’ to hold families. The inappropriate setting and inadequate living conditions of these facilities have led to poor childhood development, education, health care, and nutrition, as well as minimal time for recreational activity and threats of separation from parents. We hope this letter, supported by a broad cross section of organizations from across the nation, will convince many Members of Congress to oppose this ill-advised legislation."

The letter has been signed by 32 national organizations, including First Focus, National Council of La Raza, the National Education Association, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the Episcopal Church. Moreover, over 50 state and local organizations from across the country also signed the letter.

View the Letter and Co-signers

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E-Verify Program Snares Citizens

in the news

Electronic Dragnet for Undocumented Nets Citizens

April 8, 2008 09:07 AM (EST)
Roberto Lovato
The Huffington Post

Two hours after starting his new job at a food processing plant in 2006, Fernando Tinoco got fired. "I went to work, felt really good to have a new job and started going to it," says Tinoco, a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Chicago. "And then they called me into the office and told me that my Social Security number was fake," he adds, "And then they fired me." Apparently, Tyson Foods Inc., Tinoco's former employer, was one of the more than 52,000 companies voluntarily participating in "E-Verify", a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program designed to identify undocumented workers by electronically verifying their employment eligibility.

After the Kafkaesque experience of being hired, fired and trying to maneuver through the famously overstretched bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration to re-confirm status, Citizen Tinoco has become an outspoken critic of U.S. immigration laws' impact on citizens. "I think that citizens need to be as careful of these new immigration laws," says Tinoco, who now works at a school, adding, "they can ruin our lives too." Tinoco found his concerns echoed by Jim Harper of the conservative Cato Institute, who recently wrote that "If E-Verify goes national, get used to hearing that Orwellian term: 'non-confirmation.'"

That is why E-Verify is opposed by an unlikely alliance that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, major unions, Republican legislators and others. But it is only one of a growing number of legislative and administrative immigration control initiatives that Tinoco and many critics believe will negatively impact not just non-citizens, but citizens as well. This week, for example, Congress is considering the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, which includes provisions that mandate a national verification system like that of the more voluntary state programs like E-Verify. >>read full article

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SAVE Act Threatens American Workers

Last month the House Republicans began the process that, they hope, will force a vote on the Shuler/Tancredo “SAVE Act” in the House of Representatives. Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) filed a discharge petition for the Shuler/Tancredo bill and GOP leadership hopes to get enough signatures to force through this ill-conceived measure.

Proponents of the bill only need 218 signatures in order to bypass normal committee procedures and force the SAVE Act to the floor. There are already 185 signatures on the discharge petition!

The fact is, trying to fix our broken immigration system through status quo enforcement alone is not a sensible solution. For over twenty years the U.S. has been ramping up border and interior enforcement exponentially, yet the number of undocumented immigrants in this country continues to grow. This only proves that deportation-only strategies fail as they ignore the reasons people come to the U.S. illegally in the first place.

If the SAVE Act were to become law, employers would continue to hire undocumented workers and immigrants would continue to cross the border without permission. This would simply push undocumented workers further into the cash economy and off the tax rolls, creating an even more exploitable group of workers, undermine wages and working conditions for all and threaten law-abiding employers.

Another consequence of the SAVE Act is it's flawed mandatory employer verification system. Because the bill does not have the necessary safeguards to address the system's design problems and database inaccuracies, American workers are not protected from wrongful termination.

TAKE ACTION NOW! Send a message to House members who have not signed the discharge petition for the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088).

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Stop the SAVE Act and Protect Workers

March 11, 2008

Today Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives filed a "discharge petition" on the SAVE Act (a.k.a. the Shuler-Tancredo bill), which means they are gathering signatures to force this dangerous anti-immigrant bill to the House floor for a vote.

Call your Representatives TODAY and urge them to oppose the SAVE Act.

The list of Oregon Representatives can be found here.

For all others, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask to speak to your Representative.

For a list of Representatives who are co-sponsors on the SAVE Act click here.

Urge these Representatives to not sign the discharge petition. At least one Representative who has co-sponsored the bill, Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), has publicly stated that he would not sign the discharge petition.

What would the SAVE Act do?

It would require more than six million employers to verify the work status of more than 130 million workers within four years, regardless of their status, using a federal database already known to have an unacceptably high error rate.

It would make it easier for the government to put religious and humanitarian workers behind bars for so-called "alien smuggling."

In a half-baked attempt to address our immigration crisis, the bill would throw more resources toward ineffective border and interior enforcement rather than offer a comprehensive solution.

We need leaders who will tackle the tough issues and solve a complicated problem intelligently, not offer false promises and empty rhetoric. The SAVE Act is the return of the Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437). It represents a failure in leadership and a cynically motivated attack on immigrant families.

Who supports the SAVE Act?

The chief co-sponsors of the SAVE Act are Rep. Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina), Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-California), and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado). Rep. Tancredo has made a career, including a failed presidential candidacy, based on anti-immigrant rhetoric. Rep. Bilbray leads the House Immigration Reform Caucus and is a former lobbyist of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization recognized as a hate group by mainstream civil rights and research organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Don't let cynical election year politics hijack opportunities for real reform. America needs rational, workable and humane immigration laws. Make sure your voice gets heard!

To read more about the SAVE Act and why it is dangerous for all Americans, visit the National Immigrant Justice Center website.

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ALERT: Tell Congress to Oppose the SAVE Act

Call Your Representatives TODAY and demand that they reject the SAVE Act!

Pressure is mounting in the Democratic-led House of Representatives to act on the SAVE Act (HR 4088), an enforcement and deportation-only bill introduced and sponsored by more than 140 Democratic and Republican opponents of humane immigration reform.

Don’t let hate speech and cynical election year politics hijack opportunities for real reform. America needs rational, workable and humane immigration laws. Make sure your voice gets heard!

Call the Capitol Switchboard today at 202-225-3121 to reach your Representative.

If you are an Oregon Resident use the contact information below for your Representative:

Representative Earl Blumenauer
email: earl.blumenauer@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (503) 231-2300
D.C.: (202) 225-4811
FAX: (503) 230-5413

Representative Peter DeFazio
email: peter.defazio@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 944-9603
D.C.: (202) 225-6416
FAX:

Representative Darlene Hooley
email: darlene.hooley@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (503) 588-9100
D.C.: (202) 225-5711
FAX: (202) 225-5699

Representative Greg Walden
email: greg.walden@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 533-3303
D.C.: (202) 225-6730
FAX: (202) 225-5774

Representative David Wu
email: david.wu@mail.house.gov
Oregon: (800) 422-4003
D.C. (202) 225-0855
FAX: 503-326-5066

What would the SAVE Act do?

• It would require more than six million employers to verify the work status of more than 130 million workers within four years, regardless of their status, using a federal database already known to have an unacceptably high error rate.
• It would make it easier for the government to put religious and humanitarian workers behind bars for so-called "alien smuggling."
• In a half-baked attempt to address our immigration crisis, the bill would throw more resources toward ineffective border and interior enforcement rather than offer a comprehensive solution.

We need leaders who will tackle the tough issues and solve a complicated problem intelligently, not offer false promises and empty rhetoric like the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act amounts to a Democratic Sensenbrenner Bill. It represents a failure in leadership and a cynically motivated attack on immigrant families.

Who supports the SAVE Act?

The chief co-sponsors of the SAVE Act are Rep. Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina) and Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-California). Rep. Bilbray leads the House Immigration Reform Caucus and is a former lobbyist of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration organization recognized as a hate group by mainstream civil rights and research organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.

For a list of co-sponsors on the SAVE Act, go to: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR04088:@@@P.

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