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Keep Fighting for the DREAM!

Since September 5, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, Dreamers and allies have been fighting for their lives – their lives here, in the homes they have made, in their schools and jobs, with their children and families. The fight continues in the courts and in Congress.

Congress can act now to safeguard Dreamers and give them a path to permanent residence and citizenship. That is what the overwhelming majority of Americans want.

Congressional leadership is delaying consideration of the DREAM Act and DACA relief. The administration continues to demonstrate the bad faith and cruelty in wrongfully denying applications for DACA renewal, detaining DACA recipients, and making hollow promises that they take back the next day.

Across the country, DREAMers and allies mobilize daily. They demonstrate in Washington and in big and small cities from coast to coast. Their phone calls and emails and text messages flood into Congress daily. They demand a clean DREAM Act – that means legislation to protect DREAMers that is not weighed down with additional measures that punish other immigrants or fund an extravagant and ineffective border wall.

The pressure is on – and members of Congress feel it.

December is crucial. Relief for DREAMers can be part of the year-end budget bill. Or it can be delayed and denied all the way through March 5, when DACA officially ends.

Every day of delay means more DREAMers losing their protection as work permits and individual DACA status expires. An estimated 122 DREAMers see their DACA status expire each day, leaving them without work permits, sometimes without valid drivers licenses, and always vulnerable to deportation back to countries they left as young children. That’s more than 10,000 DREAMers from September 5 to December 1, and more every single day.

You can help to keep the pressure on Congress to act now and pass a clean DREAM Act. Call early or late. Call often. Make sure that your representatives know the very high importance you place on protecting DREAMers through passage of a clean DREAM Act. Here are some places to start:

 

 

Immigration advocates ask Hennepin County Board for legal aid for inmates facing deportation

“Immigrant advocates asked the Hennepin County Board on Tuesday to improve the criminal justice process for county inmates facing deportation.

“The speakers, representing a coalition of immigration organizations, made their points during a discussion of the 2018 public safety budget by the board’s Administration Committee.

“They argued that people facing deportation after arrest for low-level crimes often aren’t informed of their legal rights, and too often end up in the hands of federal immigration agents without legal representation.”

Minnesota Representative Erik Paulsen urges speedy passage of legislation to protect DACA recipients

St. Paul, MN, November 10, 2017 – Republican Third District Congressman Erik Paulsen joined 13 other Republican representatives on Thursday in calling for Congressional action to protect DACA recipients. The press conference came on the day that DACA recipients and supporters flooded into Washington to demand a clean DREAM Act before the end of the year.

In a statement after the joint press conference, Representative Paulsen said:

“This morning shows once again there is a growing consensus for a solution to help young people who came to our country through no fault of their own and for all practical purposes are Americans. I will continue to support helping the 6,000 DACA recipients in Minnesota to ensure they remain valuable contributors to our state and country.”

The administration announced an end to DACA on September 5, effective on March 5. In Minnesota alone, more than 6,200 young DACA recipients arrived in this country at age 15 or younger and consider Minnesota their home.

“Thanks to Representative Paulsen for his support for a path to permanent residence and citizenship for DREAMers,” said John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “We know that all of the DFLers in Minnesota’s Congressional delegation support DREAMers, and I believe that the other Republicans in the delegation will join with Representative Paulsen.”

The state of Minnesota needs DACA. Minnesotans with DACA pay $15 million in state and local taxes. According to the Center for American Progress, ending DACA would cost Minnesota more than $367 million in annual GDP losses. We currently are experiencing historic waves of older workers leaving the workforce. According to the Humphrey Institute and Greater MSP’s January 23, 2017 report, we not only need to keep every last DREAMer in MN – but we need to expand the rate of immigration to Minnesota to maintain our current economic standard of living.

On October 26, chief human resource officers for 110 major corporations urged Congress to pass DACA legislation quickly, and to recognize the crucial role played by foreign-born workers in the U.S. economy. Minnesota corporations signing on to the letter to Congress included Target, Mayo Clinic, EcoLab, 3M and Medtronic. The letter concluded

“America’s international competitors understand that attracting workforce talent from around the world is vital to economic success, and many are rewriting their immigration policies accordingly. Some have gone so far as to say that the United States’ reticent attitude toward foreign workers has created an opportunity for other countries to secure the economic benefits derived from those workers. As Congress and the administration consider proposals for changes in the immigration laws and/or enforcement strategies regarding existing laws, we urge you to consider these benefits to American workers, companies, communities, and the American economy.”

 

Contact:

John Keller, Executive Director
Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
450 North Syndicate Street, Suite 200
St. Paul, MN 55104 St. Paul, MN 55104
(651) 641-1011
john.keller@ilcm.org (cell: 651-428-1402)

FFI:

 

Irish, Italians, Uzbeks and the “Diversity Visa” program

The biggest winners in the Diversity Visa Lottery are private companies that make big bucks from hopeful would-be immigrants – who have less than a one-half-of-one-percent chance of success.

The Diversity Visa Lottery came under attack this week when Trump called for its abolition because accused terrorist Sayfullo Saipov emigrated to the United States through that program seven years ago. Here’s a quick summary of when and why the Diversity Visa Lottery began, what the program is today, and why it has nothing to do with terrorism:

Why a Diversity Visa Lottery? Some history …

The original Diversity Visa Lottery, also known as the green card lottery, reserved 16,000 of its 50,000 annual visa quota for Irish immigrants. That was a pretty big clue to its origin: dissatisfaction of European-Americans with the low number of European-American immigrants in the 1980s.  European immigrants had dominated U.S. immigration for centuries, from the 1600s all the way to the 1950s.

BBC and Vox quoted Tweets by CUNY Brooklyn College political science professor Anna Law, explaining

“The program was created by powerful and well placed Italian and Irish American Senators and Reps to help their co-ethnics immigrate.

“It was pork barrel legislation designed to benefit very specific groups. The lottery was created w/ a formula to make eligible only persons from nations who had sent a small # of peeps to the US; it obviated the need for family ties/job skills. The “diversity” language was window dressing and branding to sell it. Was politically smarter a label than a visa for “peeps with no family ties or job skills.”

The stated purpose of the lottery was providing visas to people from “countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States.” In this case, “historically low” referred to the five-year period before the visa application, not to the history of the United States. The Irish preference expired, and now the Diversity Visa Lottery allows no more than 7 percent of the visas to go to any single country.

The Diversity Visa Lottery passed in 1990 as part of a bigger immigration bill, approved by a House vote of 264-118 and a Senate vote of 89-8. President George H.W. Bush signed the bill, which had wide, bi-partisan support.

How the Diversity Visa Lottery works today

Most people around the world have no way to apply for a U.S. permanent resident visa – if they are not close family members of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, skilled professionals with a  job offer waiting and an employer willing to go through an extended visa process, or refugees waiting years for placement, they have no way to even apply. That’s why millions of people – nearly 14.7 million in 2016 –take a chance on the Diversity Visa Lottery. Only 50,000 winners are chosen each year, so that gives each applicant less than a one-half of one percent chance of winning.

If you are from a country that sent more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the past five years, you cannot apply for a diversity visa. Right now, that means no applicants from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. Only applicants from an eligible country can apply.

Besides coming from an eligible country, applicants have to have at least a high school education or “two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform.”

Applicants must file online. The entry period for the 2019 visa lottery runs from October 18-November 22, 2017. (That’s a change – the original entry period was October 3-November 7, but a “technical issue” required throwing out all the entries made prior to October 10, so the time period was re-set)

Once the applications are in, the State Department conducts a computerized lottery to choose the lucky winners – who are then eligible to pay the fees and apply for a visa, but are not guaranteed acceptance. They have to go through the usual extensive application process, security checks, personal interviews, etc. that are required of every visa applicant.

Remember – that’s 14.7 million entries in the visa lottery and only 50,000 winners. Better odds than the Powerball, but still pretty steep.

Nothing to do with terrorism – but still not a great idea

If you are a wanna-be terrorist, the Diversity Visa Lottery seems like a strange route to make. First, you enter a lottery with a less than one-half of one percent chance of winning. Then you go through extensive background checks and personal interviews and wait for at least two years, probably more, for a visa. That doesn’t sound like a plausible terrorist plan.

Of course, that doesn’t make the program a good idea. Giving out visas by lottery does not endanger the country, but it also does not serve any obvious goal of immigration policy.

Press release: New immigration detention facilities proposed for Minnesota, three other states, would escalate due process and civil rights violations

Graphic by Rini Templeton

October 26, 2017 – The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) joined with 13 other legal services providers and human rights advocate to tell ICE that new immigration detention facilities it seeks would undermine due process and civil rights for thousands of detained immigrants. The joint letter responded to ICE’s October 12 request for information (RFI) to assist in the identification of new detention sites to detain up to 3,000 people each day within 180 miles of St. Paul, Chicago, Detroit, and Salt Lake City.

The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, Advocates for Human Rights, and the Detainee Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota work to provide pro bono services to people detained by ICE in Sherburne, Carver, Freeborn, Ramsey, and Nobles County jails in Minnesota. Our organizations are already overwhelmed by the number of people needing assistance, and we do not have the capacity to provide needed representation to the additional number of immigrants who would be detained under the new RFI.

“Immigrants in detention need lawyers,” said John Keller, executive director of ILCM. “Immigration law is insanely complicated, and immigration judges are overburdened with huge backlogs of cases. Without an attorney, immigrants cannot determine what legal options they may have or what facts and arguments to put before the judge.”

In Minnesota, only 21 percent of detained immigrants have legal representation. There is no right to appointed counsel in the immigration court system, so immigrants in detention are only represented if they can retain private counsel or find free legal services.

Increasing detention is the wrong direction to go. Alternatives to detention, including parole, affordable bond, community-based support programs and regular check-ins, cost less than 10 percent of the amount of detention, according to the Government Accounting Office. Pilot programs show compliance rates at check-in and hearings of 95-99 percent.

“Detention makes it much harder for immigrants to find attorneys or to prepare for their hearings,” said Keller. “Moreover, while the Constitution requires immigration detention to be civil and non-punitive, that’s not what happens. Across the country, most immigrant detainees are held in private prisons, where abusive treatment has been repeatedly documented. Increasing immigration jails is the wrong move to make. Alternatives to detention are both less expensive and more humane.”

Read and download the RFI response letter at https://immigrantjustice.org/detention-RFI-letter

The letter was signed by representatives from the following organizations:

In Minnesota:

  • Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota
  • Advocates for Human Rights, Minnesota
  • ACLU of Minnesota
  • Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid
  • University of Minnesota Detainee Rights Clinic

Outside Minnesota:

  • American Civil Liberties Union
  • ACLU of Michigan
  • ACLU of Utah
  • ACLU of Wyoming
  • Detention Watch Network
  • Immigrant Legal Services, Salt Lake City
  • Michigan Immigrant Rights Center
  • National Immigrant Justice Center, Chicago

 

Press release: Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota praises St. Cloud leaders for standing up for refugees

October 19, 2017 – St. Cloud community members and elected officials this week denounced an anti-refugee resolution proposed by city council member Jeff Johnson. Council member John Libert called the resolution “inappropriate and said he thinks it is unconstitutional. Mayor Dave Kleis agreed that the resolution seemed unconstitutional and said that “We strive very hard to be a welcoming community. We work very hard to encourage people to come to the community. We should be focusing our efforts on making sure everyone succeeds.”

The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota applauds the response of these and other St. Cloud leaders and residents in rejecting the intolerance and bigotry of a small but vocal group that has pushed for a moratorium on refugee resettlement. The strong responses from community leaders reflects their determination to make St. Cloud a welcoming city. These leaders, not the loud but small anti-immigrant clique, represent the community as a whole.

Their strong response has already succeeded in delaying the introduction of the resolution, which Johnson proposed in an email to council members on Tuesday, the same day as St. Cloud’s 12th annual “Conversation on Race.” Johnson initially planned to introduce the resolution on October 23, but then said he would delay until November 6. In order to introduce the resolution, he would need a second from another city council member.

“Minnesota welcomes refugees and recognizes their important contributions to our communities,” said John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “Just last month we had a wonderful, positive educational presentation about immigration and refugee law and policy with more than 75 persons joining us at the library in St. Cloud. These New Americans are vital to our workforce, schools, and futures. Like the rest of the state, St. Cloud is strengthened by diversity, and especially by the courage and strength of refugees. We join the majority of St. Cloud residents in rejecting prejudice and we stand in support of intentional, positive measures to make Minnesota a welcoming state.”