Readers sound off: California makes its own immigration rules
Letter to the editor:
President Trump has brandished his deportation machine by attacking Dreamers who arrived here as children, raiding schools hunting for “illegal middle-schoolers” and kidnapping parents on their worksites — an immigration policy that relies on creating a culture of fear, hate and distrust of anyone perceived to be an immigrant. If we value our neighbors, our young people and our coworkers, we will resist the administration's cruel and racially-biased deportation policies and create a better path toward public safety.
As federal immigration policy becomes more extreme, clarified by acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency Acting Director Thomas Homan saying, “You should look over your shoulder and you need to be worried,” it will be up to states and local jurisdictions to refuse to submit to Trump’s mob rule policies that target, criminalize and scapegoat immigrants and other communities of color. Instead, our immigration policies should assert values of safety and family unity.
That’s why the California Values Act, which is on its way to becoming law, would make our public schools, hospitals, courthouses and libraries safe and available to all California residents, regardless of immigration status.
California could lead the way in showing how values-based immigration policy that allows immigrants to access basic protections and directs law enforcement to do its job — not Trump's dirty work — will enhance public safety, keep families together and strengthen the economy for all.
Matt Nelson, Presente.org; Oakland
California and Colorado want to thwart Trump on immigration. Bad idea.
Letter to the editor:
The demand for the work that undocumented immigrants provide is not going away and will not abate by punishing employers. We need immigration policy that accepts this reality, allowing immigrants to work legally in a way that jeopardizes neither them nor their employer.
We used to admit the workers who take these jobs as immigrants who could bring their families, work legally and stay in the communities they helped to build. Now the only legal way for these workers to enter the United States is on a temporary guest worker visa, such as an H-2 visa, that resembles indentured servitude.
H-2 visas are owned by employers, not the immigrants themselves, which means these workers cannot legally find work elsewhere in the U.S. once they’re here. The boss holds all the power and can have them deported at any time. Immigrants with H-2 visas typically arrive in debt after agreeing to pay recruiters in their home countries for the opportunity to work here.
Naomi Tsu, Deputy Legal Director of the Immigrant Justice Project, Southern Poverty Law Center; Atlanta
Comments are edited for clarity and grammar:
President Trump, please come down hard on these liberal Democrats ruining my once great state of California. Make California Great Again! Remove all liberals!
— Joe Richards
States that try to adjust and enforce immigration laws as they see fit will end up regretting it in the long run. Some undocumented immigrant are coming from bad places, I'm sure they made those place that way and they will make whatever state they take over exactly the same.
— Marlene Augst
The progressive consistency is in opposing what they consider to be inhumane and unconstitutional actions by local, state and federal government agencies. These new well-meaning but misguided local ordinances, designed to shield illegals from ICE, do not advance progress towards immigration reform.
Businesses and politicians have an economic incentive to keep immigration reform mired in stalemate. Businesses benefit from cheap, illegal labor, avoid payroll and workman's compensation cost, as well as depress legal labor costs. Politicians benefit in their fundraising campaigns, by using the specter of undocumented criminals pouring over the border, or (on the flip side) sob stories of families being ripped apart by an unfeeling, uncaring political opponent.
The sad thing is both of the respective political bases are duped by these simplistic characterizations of undocumented immigrants and the immigration policy problem. Then, politicians get reelected and nothing meaningful happens.
Citizens, local and state governments should be pressuring Congress to update our immigration laws and regulations. Demand real solutions, not just more empty rhetoric.
Businesses that routinely hire undocumented immigrants should be exposed and prosecuted. Simply paying the occasional fine should not be the "cost of doing business," when hiring undocumented immigrants.
Building a wall or having sanctuary cities are not solutions to our broken, outdated immigration system. Here is where progressives and conservatives should be finding common ground. If the they could only stop vilifying each other and start talking to each other.
— Todd Fedoruk
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