ELCA Advocacy Action Alert: Oppose Harmful Changes to Immigration Law in Emergency Funding Negotiations
Immigration continues to be a thorny issue in budget negotiations. Lawmakers returned this January determined to work on President Biden’s $106 billion emergency supplemental funding request. Some members of Congress have conditioned their support on inclusion of policy provisions that would be injurious.
Join in urging opposition of harmful immigration law changes as a condition of emergency funding.
People fleeing personal danger and persecution have the right to seek asylum in the United States. While changes such as better coordination across the federal-state-and-municipal levels so that cities are better equipped to receive newcomers would be meaningful, the policies under consideration are costly and very harmful to asylum seekers and other immigrants. These would curtail due process through rapid expulsion, expand the practice of expedited removal nationwide, raise the bar to qualify for relief and undo humanitarian parole.
Advocates like Andres Garcias, an asylum recipient from El Salvador, are pushing back: “I fled violence and discrimination for being a gay man,” he said at a rally held Jan. 9 in Washington, D.C. “I am living proof asylum saves lives.”
The ELCA recognizes the most effective way to reduce migration pressures is by addressing the desperation that is pushing people out of their communities, for example shaping the ELCA AMMPARO strategy from the commitment to address root causes of migration in countries of origin and treatment of migrants in transit. Writing of witnessing the inhumane transportation of Haitian migrants in the Dominic Republic by Dominican immigration authorities, Stephen Deal, regional representative for AMMPARO, said: “I came face-to-face with the anguished, exhausted faces of men, women and children who had been packed into the truck’s cargo space. Inhumane doesn’t begin to describe the conditions in which they were being transported.”
The ELCA social message on "Immigration" reminds us "that hospitality for the uprooted is a way to live out the biblical call to love the neighbor in response to God’s love in Jesus Christ" (p. 3).
Congress must reject harmful law changes and should opt for bold policies that uphold fairness and due process across the immigration system; seek wise investments that enhance coordination at the federal-state-municipal level; and recommit to addressing the drivers of migration.
Send a customized message to Congress through the ELCA Action Center.
Thank you for your advocacy.
