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White House holds Dreamers hostage in anti-immigrant plan
Posted on Jan 26 2018
Press release, January 26, 2018—The one-page list of demands released by the White House late yesterday represents their continuing attempt to hold Dreamers hostage to their all-out attack on immigrants and immigration.
“This plan offers nothing new,” said John Keller, executive director of the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM). “The anti-immigrant hardliners are exploiting the crisis they created, offering a limited path to citizenship for Dreamers at the expense of all other immigrants. Their hypocrisy is overwhelming. One example: the section eliminating most family visas is titled ‘Preserving the Nuclear Family.'”
The White House memo calls for slashing legal immigration to the lowest level since the 1920s, by eliminating most family visas and ending the diversity visa lottery. The plan guts asylum protections, sending Central American men, women, and children back to the violence they fled. It calls for increasing enforcement and streamlining deportation, while wasting $25 billion on a border wall. In exchange, the plan offers a 10-12 year path to citizenship for Dreamers, hedged around with eligibility requirements and provisions for revocation of status on several largely undefined grounds.
“The hard-liners created this crisis by ending DACA,” said Keller. “Now they are holding Dreamers hostage to get Congress to pass their racist and anti-immigrant agenda.”
Some 86 percent of all Americans want legal protection for Dreamers. It’s time to stop the hardliners in the White House and in Congress from holding Dreamers hostage. Congress must act now to protect Dreamers and end the crisis that the White House created by ending DACA.