Oppose Cruel Immigration Bill

Take Action Against Cruel Anti-Immigrant Bill that Threatens Millions: Vote may occur any day!

The U.S. House of Representatives votes this week on a Republican-backed bill that would make it a felony to be an undocumented worker and gut the due process rights of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens.

On Thursday, Dec. 8, 2005, the House Judiciary Committee passed along strict party lines the measure by Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). This GOP-sponsored bill, H.R. 4437, would among other things make the crime of being here illegally an "aggravated felony," meaning the entire undocumented population, including 1.6 million children, would be permanently barred from the U.S.

Extreme provisions buried in the bill would target legal immigrants, citizens and those applying for citizenship--taking away basic rights like a day in court and a meaningful defense.

H.R. 4437 subverts America's most deeply held values, including a day in court, checks and balances, and freedom from unjust and arbitrary detention. Instead of fixing our broken immigration system, this bill will make matters worse by turning millions of decent, hard-working people into criminals, driving them further underground and pushing more workers into the black market of smugglers and criminals.

What we need is a system allowing people already here to earn the right to stay by continuing to perform work crucial to the U.S. economy, reforms such as the bipartisan, broadly supported AgJobs bill, cosponsored by both Democrats and Republicans.

The cruel and extremist Sensenbrenner bill is headed for a vote by the entire House this week.

Your House representative needs to hear from you about why this bad bill should not pass. Instead, he or she should support comprehensive immigration reform such as the AgJobs bill (H.R. 884).

TAKE ACTION
Please call and e-mail your U.S. Representative. Ask him or her to vote against this bill.