For Immediate Release // Excuse cross-posting // Please share
Contact: SG Sarmiento, NDLON, 202-746-2099
The Circus in Congress Will Not Distract Growing Calls For Immigrant Equality
In reaction to the most recent spectacle in Congress and the publication of the President’s budget request, Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of NDLON, issued the following statement:
“For years, lawmakers in Washington, DC, were content to block progress on immigration reform, but now it seems some are seizing upon congressional dysfunction in a shameful- yet ultimately futile- effort to move the country backwards, presumably to an era denying equal protection under the law.
“Racism manifests itself in many forms, and we will call out Republican nativism, xenophobia, and intolerance for what it is in hopes that the regressive voices within the Republican Party will be shunned and eventually silenced.
“But we will not be distracted or deterred from making progress in defense of immigrants’ rights. And while this includes ensuring a successful implementation of new protections for some immigrants, it will also include speaking out against a White House budget that maintains a draconian deportation regime that hyper-modernizes the enforcement of outdated and unjust laws.
“Now is not the time for the Obama Administration to double the funding for surveillance, detention, and prosecution of precarious immigrants, nor is it time for the Administration to double-down on failed enforcement initiatives that criminalize our communities and incentivize civil rights violations by local police. “Instead, now is the time to demand that every available option be utilized using existing laws at the federal, state, and local levels to mitigate the grave injustice caused by the broken political process in Washington. Our goal remains the same: Not one more deportation. Not one more worker or family criminalized. And not one more day without equality.”
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