For immediate release
Contact: B. Loewe, NDLON, 773.791.4668, bloewe@ndlon.org
NDLON reaction to mixed messages as anticipation builds.
As leaks trickle out about the President’s plans to announce a change in deportation policy, reports have surfaced that the White House is turning to familiar allies to defend the policy shift regardless of its substance. The Hill reported that the WH is “tempering expectations.” Meanwhile, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Muñoz told Politico, that the President will be “going to go as far as he can under the law.”
In reaction, Pablo Alvarado issued this statement:
” We agree with Muñoz that the President must do everything under the law to protect immigrants, and we will join in supporting him if and when he does. The question is whether he has the moral courage to do the right thing.
The President must look to administrative relief as a question of correcting injustice and ensuring good governance and end the pattern of using immigrants’ lives for partisan games.
He quite clearly has the legal authority to grant work authorization at the very least to those who would qualify for the bipartisan Senate bill’s legalization framework. If his advisors see this as setting up another push in Congress, the best way to do that is through reaffirming what both Democrats and Republicans have already agreed to not undermining it.
What we will not support is more political football or being treated as a wedge issue, nor will we accept arbitrary lines that divide us.
100% of immigrants deserve equality, and regardless of what the President says or when he says it, we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to defend and advance our rights.”
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