Today America’s Voice is launching an online ad campaign asking Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA) to remove his name from a controversial immigration resolution, H.Res. 1026– the so-called “BRIDGE Resolution.”
The measure has been dubbed the “BRIDGE to Nowhere” by Americans who are sick and tired of costly “get-tough” proposals that do nothing to fix our broken immigration system. The Irish Immigration Center in Philadelphia kicked things off by calling on Murphy to remove his name from BRIDGE. The call was amplified by Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive political blog Daily Kos, who called it a “cheap anti-immigrant shot.”
Murphy has come under fire from religious, progressive, and community leaders for joining with the virulently anti-immigrant Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to co-sponsor the BRIDGE Resolution. It is a proposal that tightens immigration enforcement at any cost; keeps our immigration system broken, and banks on the misguided notion that 12 million undocumented immigrants will simply pick up and leave the country.
Congressman Murphy should be leading the fight to pass real comprehensive immigration reform, not following hard-line Members of Congress like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) down this ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’
Please join us, and tell Patrick Murphy:
Come on, Congressman, you’re better than this. We need real, comprehensive immigration reform, not another BRIDGE to Nowhere.
Call toll-free: (866) 961-4293.
The President announced his budget Monday, sending many members of Congress into an angry frenzy over $3.83 trillion that Obama had allotted for an array of programs – mostly to fight growing unemployment and strengthen our weak economy.
But some members of Congress — many of the same who are complaining over the “huge” deficit– are trying to keep this big secret under wraps:
There is a $4.1 trillion choice in Washington. We did the math, and put simply:
Comprehensive Immigration Reform = $1.5 trillion increase in GDP over 10 years
Mass Deportation = $2.6 trillion loss in GDP over 10 years
How’s that, you ask?
A new report called “Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” by the Immigration Policy Center and the Center for American Progress shows that a policy of comprehensive immigration reform would grow U.S. GDP by 0.84 percent over 10 years, or a cumulative $1.5 trillion.
Two reports with bearing on the immigration debate were released in Washington yesterday: an Urban Institute study finding that three-fourths of the 5.5 million children of undocumented parents were born in the United States and live under the fear that their parents will be arrested, separated from them or deported; and a study from the American Bar Association (ABA) concluding that the overload of deportation cases urgently requires restructuring of immigration law at both legislative and administrative levels.
Media outlets also continued coverage of Monday’s presentation of the President’s budget and its emphasis on funding deportation programs.
The New York Times today uncovers how U.S. immigration authorities under President Bush colluded with a Mississippi marine oil-rig company to punish workers exercising their basic labor rights. The article details shocking correspondence between the employer, Signal International, and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which advised the company how to privately deport workers who were complaining about mistreatment on the job.
Apparently, ICE’s advice to the company was this:
Don’t give them any advance notice. Take them all out of the line on the way to work; get their personal belongings; get them in a van, and get their tickets, and get them to the airport, and send them back to India.
Outrageous.
The Signal case is a clear and compelling example of how the Bush Administration prioritized enforcement policies over labor rights to the detriment of all workers, as a recent report from American Rights at Work described and as we, at America’s Voice, have consistently highlighted.
Putting the needs of dishonest employers before the rights of workers is un-American. It’s time for a full investigation into the allegations of misconduct that occurred during the Bush years.
We need to ensure that the enforcement of immigration laws no longer trumps the protection of workers’ rights.
Andrea Nill reports at the Wonk Room on White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ statements yesterday evening, responding to growing criticism that President Obama did not say enough about immigration during his State of the Union address last week. Here is the video of Gibbs’ comments:
GIBBS: I think the President’s position on immigration reform and what he supports is enormously clear. He campaigned on it, he worked on legislation I think is quite similar to what would come up this year in the House or the Senate with people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham in 2005 and 2006 in the Senate. Like climate change there are bipartisan efforts that are ongoing to bring legislation like this to the fore and to create bipartisan majorities to get it passed. The president hosted a meeting here not too long ago to keep that process going and we look forward to taking part in it.
Nill argues that it is more crucial than ever to emphasize the economic merits of reform, with a bipartisan group in Congress slated to move it forward :
According to Gibbs, the question isn’t whether President Obama still supports passing comprehensive immigration reform, but rather, whether the White House can be convinced that there is enough bipartisan support to get it passed. A recent affirmative statement from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) indicates that at least one key GOP member is reaching out to his colleagues and encouraging them to embrace the immigration issue. Meanwhile, the majority of Republican and Independent voters already support comprehensive immigration reform.
Ultimately, immigration has always come at the end of a long list of priorities and promises that President Obama optimistically pledged would be realized within his first couple years in office. Immigration advocates who would like to see the issue addressed in 2010 have already pointed out that immigration reform has become “low-hanging fruit” on a legislative tree that has fewer and fewer branches. Yet it’s perhaps even more critical to emphasize how immigration would fit into Obama’s broader policy agenda in terms of creating jobs, growing the Democratic Party, minimizing losses in 2010, and removing an obstructive wedge that has plagued American politics for decades.
Blogger Duke at The Sanctuary argues the pure political merits of passing reform now:
