TL;DR August 14th
Welcome to our new(s) segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.
This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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Harris's Record on Immigration is a Prosecutor's Record - with Nuance
When you look at what Harris did as a public official in California (which NPR reminds us is the state with the largest number and share of immigrants) you see someone who had immigration “at the core of her own life experience” but whose actions were not always aligned with the most vulnerable among us.
Notably, she fought the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, saying that they should turn over juvenile immigrants arrested for crimes to ICE agents, despite San Francisco being a sanctuary city. On the other hand, she protected immigrant communities by going after abusive employers who were shortchanging immigrant workers. NPR argues Harris’s viewpoint comes from her experience as a cop. From her perspective, she’s enforcing the existing law, whether it helps the community by prosecuting abusive bosses or hurts community by turning over kids to ICE.
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NBC News highlights the personal stories of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers who have fled to the U.S. to escape the homophobia, transphobia, family exclusion, and state violence they faced in their home countries. These individuals share accounts of what they endured and the life-threatening risks they would have faced if they had stayed. Under US law, persecution due to sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status are grounds for asylum. But these people are caught up in the same Byzantine system we’ve covered before and need to find lawyers and aid while they make their asylum cases. Fortunately, organizations like Immigration Equality are stepping up to help.
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Gov Abbott Tries to Turn Hospitals Into Immigration Enforcement Centers
In his quest to blame everything on immigrants and refugees, TX Governor Abbott has ordered hospitals to collect data on which patients do not present legal paperwork, and how much treating them costs. He has this fantasy that doing so will allow Texas to seek Federal funds to cover those costs. Meanwhile hospitals have no way to collect this data, and the Federal government has no program for reimbursing states for such expenses…
The result will be to drive people away from important medical care while creating confusion for hospitals. This conflicts with existing laws that require medical facilities to provide life-saving treatment to anyone, regardless of status or ability to pay.
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Harris’ Campaign Ads Are Pointing in the Wrong Direction
Harris’ team seems to think the way to answer the Right’s ridiculous “Border Czar” schoolyard name-calling is by… claiming she’s an actual Border Czar? A recent Harris campaign ad talks about how much tougher she will be on undocumented immigration than Trump ever was. The ad promises she will increase the number of border patrol agents, and pass legislation to block fentanyl and human traffickers. This ad is extremely problematic, conflating “the border,” crime, and immigration. Given that she started her campaign talking about reviving the failed border security bill, it’s clear that we have to let her know this is not the direction immigration policy needs to go.
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