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The following is a statement by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) on the House Judiciary Committee hearing regarding legalization for immigrant youths.
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) rejects the inadequate efforts of House Republicans to provide some immigrant youth with a path to citizenship while leaving behind their families in a permanent underclass.
The House continues to fail our communities by not addressing immigration reform in a comprehensive manner, instead offering crumbs like the so-called Kids Act that will separate children from their parents. Failure by the House to pass immigration reform in a comprehensive manner with a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants is not an option.
A majority in the House supports comprehensive immigration reform. Yet House Republican leadership, including Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam from Illinois, has refused to allow a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation like the bipartisan bill that the Senate passed last month.
The failure by House Republicans to move forward with immigration reform during July further aggravates their strained relationship with Latino and immigrant voters.
"America wants Congress to fix this country’s broken immigration system," said ICIRR CEO Lawrence Benito, "and the House needs to stop the political maneuvering. Republicans like Congressman Roskam have a choice before them: deliver a real solution on immigration and start to rebuild their political credibility, or step further and further away from mainstream America and the Latino, Asian, and immigrant community with extreme proposals that fail to reform our immigration system."
Even though Congressman Roskam represents a district with a growing Latino population, his voting record has failed his Latino constituents. In 2009, he sponsored a bill to take citizenship away from children born in the United States to undocumented parents. In 2010, he voted against the DREAM Act, which would give young undocumented people a path to citizenship after completing higher education or joining the military. Most recently, he voted to deport DREAM-eligible youths.
ICIRR will continue to push Congressman Roskam and the rest of the Illinois Congressional delegation to pass comprehensive immigration legislation that keeps families together. If Republicans want to make inroads within the Latino and immigrant communities, they need to deliver immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants.