The Draft Petition
PETITION TO THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT FOR THE REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES ON IMMIGRATION POLICY AND AMERICAN VALUES
TO THE CONGRESS and THE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES
The undersigned have many differing views on the issues that challenge the country.
We also have differing views on immigration policy challenges, and on the many wide- ranging solutions proposed by the Executive Branch and in Congress in recent years.
For over a decade efforts in Congress at sweeping immigration legislation have failed.
Executive Branch practices have generated intense controversy, and scores of judicial interventions.
Partisan divisions and calculations impede wise and just progress on this central aspect of our shared American experience.
We are united, nonetheless, that it is in the country’s best interest to enact urgently, now, a surgical and temporary set of reforms to address the most urgent of immigration challenges.
For these and other reasons we petition the Congress and President of the United States to abide and enact the following six proposals:
1. Extension for four years of DACA legal status for an estimated 690,000 DREAMERS who currently have temporary DACA and are subject today to deportation, but for temporary federal court injunctions. that may well be lifted upon expected Supreme Court review.
2. Provision of four year DACA legal status for an estimated 750,000 similarly situated DREAMERS not now in DACA status that the Trump Administration has asked Congress likewise to protect.
3. Extension for four years of Legal status for 500,000 beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs the Administration terminated as of late 2019 that currently protects persons from Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal, and Honduras.
Importantly at risk are perhaps 700,00 US citizen children of Dreamer and TPS families.
4. Enactment of clarifying provisions that, consistent with fundamental American values of decency and justice, would prescribe the treatment of families, parents and children subject to arrest, detention, separation, and due process in immigration proceedings, at the border and in the interior.
5. Enactment on a four- year sunset basis a set of enforcement enhancements related to the border, the interior, work sites, and entry/exit of temporary visa holders, drawn from bills that have previously secured wide bi-partisan support in Congressional floor votes.
6. Requirement of Semi-annual GAO Reports, Cabinet Agency studies, and independent expert analysis of implementation of the foregoing proposals, and all other major issues that these proposed surgical reforms would not address, to more objectively inform the American people and public officials in ongoing immigration policy debates that inevitably will continue to challenge the country.
Respectfully, The undersigned individuals and entities hereby thus petition the Congress and the President of the United States.
Individuals and Entities will be asked to sign this petition soon. Please check back.