Family Reunification Act Clears Committee
Feature Story by John Madrid - 8/9/2002
"There are families out there that are hurting," Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee after accepting an amendment to the Family Reunification Act (HR 1452), a bill granting deserving legal immigrants a chance for relief from arbitrary deportation. The bill was eventually passed by the House Judiciary Committee.Today, legal immigrants automatically face detention and deportation for even the most minor crimes. The 1996 immigration laws gave the INS the ability to deport people despite such common sense factors as type of sentence, length of residency, family and community ties, past military service, and the simple question of whether deportation would truly further the public interest.
Citizens and Immigrants for Equal Justice (CIEJ), a grassroots group, argues that many deportees are like Ted Dizelos, who raised four children and paid taxes in the US for over 30 years, or Eddyn Lopez who grew up in the US since the age of one, or Robert Salas whose conviction was so minor that the judge wouldn't even sentence him to a single day in prison.
"People need to understand that we're not talking about axe murderers or child molesters here. We're talking about regular people who made mistakes and paid for them in full. This bill is completely reasonable and strikes the right balance between public safety and due process," says Rob Randhava, Policy Analyst at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).
Civil Rights groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Asian Pacific America Legal Consortium (NAPALC), American Immigration Lawyer's Association (AILA), CIEJ and LCCR have united to push for passage of HR 1452.
Though co-sponsored by 4 Republicans, the bill did not pass without conflict. "It may come as a shock that anyone would oppose the fundamental American principle of having one's day in court, that anyone would deny people like the Salas' the right to have their case heard; but the measure, approved by an 18-15 vote, does have opponents," said Jeanne Butterfield, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyer's Association.
The key opposition came from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), one of the chief architects of the 1996 immigration laws, who argued that hardship cases could be taken care of by private bills. Also lobbying strongly against the measure was the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which resorted to scare tactics and even outright falsehoods in an effort to stop the bill.
"FAIR likes to say they are not 'anti-immigrant' but simply 'anti-immigration,' meaning that they want legal immigrants to be treated fairly but just want smaller numbers of immigrants coming in," continued Randhava. "But through their lobbying efforts against this bill, FAIR has basically said that long-term legal immigrants simply do not deserve the most limited due process - or even common sense - when facing something as serious as deportation."
Advocates were especially pleased that the passage of the bill amounted to a formal recognition of a major problem with the 1996 immigration laws. Laurie Kozuba, Executive Director of Citizens and Immigrants for Equal Justice comments: "It recognizes that families are being senselessly torn apart from loved ones. It's a problem and it needs to be fixed."
