I've watched some version of the #DREAMAct pass many times in the last 15 yrs, w/Lucy's hand always ready to pull away the football as Charlie Brown makes yet another run at it. But I keep watching.

Your ball @SenateDems

#DreamAndPromiseAct #HR6
#DREAMandPromise presents the first new major pathway to residency and citizenship in 25 yrs. It is a chance to reconsider everything we think we know about immigration to the US--especially the current criminal bars to admission--and I hope the Senate takes it up in that spirit
We urgently need to give #DACA and #TPS recipients a chance to stay in the only country most of them have ever really had any life in. But that doesn't mean we have to cut & paste current bars to admission, most of which tie to bad late-1900s drug & mass incarceration policy
The main criminal bar still in effect is a century older than even that, going back to a time when people still knew what "moral turpitude" actually meant.

If English is your first language, can you define "turpitude"? Like, right now? (Hint: it has nothing to do with paint)
"Moral turpitude" is so meaningless that courts have had to agree it is undefinably "nebulous"--and yet residency is routinely denied on these grounds.

There are plenty of other reasons to do away with criminal bars, at minimum ppl have a right to know what the law is and means

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More from @matt_cam

27 Feb
The short & long term effects on kids of having a parent taken into ICE custody for even a few days--let held for years before being deported for life--are all too well-known... and we're simply not allowed to argue this point when seeking release on bond in #immigrationcourt
Immigration judges constantly deny bond and hold parents for months based on anything from pending petty theft allegations to 10-yr-old drunk driving convictions to supposed "gang ties" which DHS has no obligation whatsoever to prove. Lives, psyches, futures destroyed in seconds
We are sometimes allowed to at least introduce evidence of what separation/deportation would do to a US citizen child's mental health, but undocumented kids might as well not exist. They have no value.

It makes me physically I'll to perpetuate these harms just by doing my job
Read 7 tweets
19 Feb
1/ Let's talk about a few small but vital parts of the #USCitizenshipAct which may not make the kinds of headlines a pathway to citizenship does, but could make millions of people's lives better the day it passes.
2/ Before we do that, it is very important to me that you understand just how *bad* Joe Biden's immigration record is. It is not at all unfair to say that he is directly responsible for some of the worst stuff that this bill is only now undoing.

jacobinmag.com/2019/04/joe-bi…
3/ Let's start with the definition of the word "conviction."

Every state has some form of alternative sentencing designed to divert charges & keep people from the lifetime burden of a criminal record.

Congress (& Biden) didn't like this, and changed federal law accordingly.
Read 25 tweets
18 Feb
There will never be a comprehensive immigration reform bill which anyone will love, but from everything I've seen about this bill so far there is quite a lot to like. We're not going to have this chance again anytime soon, & it's worth passing just to fix some of the worst of '96
Hundreds of thousands married to US citizens w/USC kids have no choice but to remain undocumented under current law.

Millions have suffered badly over minor criminal issues which their states specifically did not intend to be convictions.

This bill would immediately help them
I have plenty of criticism for this bill, bc of course I do, but I still need to do a thorough read tonight.
Read 4 tweets
17 Feb
Save yourself a click: it's "alien." The word is alien.

"Alien" is a 700-yr-old word good only for an imm. system based in 19th-century thinking. It is etymologically rooted in otherness, ideologically predicated in suspicion, & legally useless. Kill it

cnn.com/2021/01/21/pol…
"Alien" doesn't just mean someone who is not a U.S. citizen. It very literally emphasizes strangeness. Otherness. Not belonging.

I'd prefer to use "non-citizen" for the same reason that Robert Law would prefer that @axios use "former Trump official" instead of "sociopath" ImageImage
Take this @CBP story from a few days ago about the rescue of "aliens in distress," including an "alien female trapped in thick vegetation." This kind of language fuels the industrialized world's largest, cruelest, & least humane law enforcement agency.

cbp.gov/newsroom/local…
Read 7 tweets
15 Feb
1/ I just listened to the complete record of a case in which an #immigrationjudge denied an #asylum claim for a gay ICE detainee from El Salvador, and it is an absolutely textbook model of why we need appointed counsel in deportation proceedings. Keep reading for the lowlights.
2/ This man came to the US in '89 after yrs of persecution on account of his sexuality. As if threats he was getting from gang members who bullied him with homophobic slurs almost daily weren't enough, he was also afraid of an abusive partner. An uncle was killed for being gay
3/ Once he came to the US, he found love, community, and a chance at being able to live openly as who he is. He never looked back. He had legal status for most of the time he was in the US, and only a minor misdemeanor relating to disorderly conduct.
Read 14 tweets
2 Feb
Stephen Miller had no real talent for policy or people, but brought one enormous advantage in his 4-yr mission to remake US immigration: he wanted to get it done.

If immigration were an actual Biden priority we'd have an actual bill in Congress rn. We don't even have a draft.
For the last 4 yrs Dems knew that (1) Trump's immigration policies were enormously unpopular with all but the most unreachable MAGA base and (2) they would inevitably at some point be back in power and able to pass legislation.

And we don't even have a draft.
Weeks before the inauguration Joe Biden began signaling that immigration would not be a priority for his administration bc those of us who have seen what this system does to ppl and know that change can't wait were asking too much too loudly.

But there was never even a draft.
Read 4 tweets

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