AILA: H.R 1148 Offers No Workable Solution to Serious, Long-Standing Problems with Immigration System
On March 2, 2015, AILA submitted a statement for the record to the House Judiciary Committee opposing H.R. 1148, the “Michael Davis, Jr. in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act,” which is scheduled for markup this week. H.R. 1148 resurrects the discredited “SAFE Act” from the 112th Congress and additionally defunds the implementation of much of the President’s November 2014 executive action. It seeks to undo the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. U.S. by allowing 50 different states and thousands of localities to enact and enforce their own immigration laws. It criminalizes mere unlawful presence, taking the very approach adopted in the notorious H.R. 4437 (Rep. Sensenbrenner R-WI) that sparked massive nonviolent protests in 2005. The bill's only answer to the brokenness of our immigration system, our statement says, is a deport-them-all strategy which has been widely discredited by Republican and Democratic leaders. The severity of the enforcement-only provisions contained in H.R. 1148 is fundamentally inconsistent with principles of due process and fairness grounded in the Constitution. H.R. 1148 will hurt hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, families, businesses and the U.S. economy.