Suffolk NYCLU Applauds the Defeat of Anti-Immigrant Resolution

Suffolk NYCLU Applauds the Defeat of Anti-Immigrant Resolution

June 9, 2004 Suffolk County, New York: The Suffolk County Chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union (Suffolk NYCLU) commends the Suffolk County Legislature for taking a stand in favor of immigrants rights by voting against Sense Resolution 42 entitled, “Memorializing Resolution Requesting Federal Government to Enforce Immigration Laws” on June 8, 2004. Jared Feuer, Executive Director of the Suffolk NYCLU, praised the vote saying, “Current immigration law is increasingly disconnected from our nation’s values and economic realities. It fails to prevent illegal immigration, it keeps families apart, it violates due process and privacy rights, and it meets neither our security nor our economic needs.” Our immigration system needs to be reformed so that immigration is legal, safe, and in keeping with Constitutional protections. This resolution would have only endorsed failed legislation and taken no steps toward needed changes. By voting it down, the legislature stood for fairness and equality in immigration laws, and against fear and xenophobia. The Suffolk Chapter of the NYCLU urges the legislature to move beyond symbolism and act proactively to develop creative solutions to help our immigrant population. We live in a diverse society made strong by its very diversity. The legislature should work to nurture this strength. Below is Jared Feuer’s statement to the County Legislature.  

Statement of Jared Feuer, Director of Suffolk NYCLU to Suffolk County Legislature June 8, 2004 Members of the Legislature; my name is Jared Feuer and I am Executive Director of the Suffolk office of the New York Civil Liberties Union. I am here to make a statement against Sense Resolution #42, which requests that “the Federal government enforce immigration laws.” This resolution puts forth an argument that immigrants in our county and our state are not paying taxes, and as a result, place an undue burden on those who “pay their fair share.” The resolution does not address others who avoid paying taxes, creating the impression that tax avoidance is the territory of immigrants only. The resolution singles out immigrants for criticism. The question is why. There are three concerns that the Suffolk NYCLU has with this Resolution. The first is simply factual. The average immigrant contributes $1,800 more in taxes than he or she receives in benefits and services provided by the government. The total net benefit (taxes paid over benefits received) to the Social Security system in today’s dollars from continuing current levels of immigration is nearly $500 billion for the 1998-2022 period and nearly $2.0 trillion for the next seventy years. 20 of the 30 jobs that the Department of Labor have projected as having the highest projected job growth in the next ten years are unskilled and semi-skilled occupations; and as the baby boomers age like those in health services, demand will increase for essential workers while growth in the work force is expected to slow to .4% per year. Barring unforeseen increases in immigration, there will be a massive reduction in the total size of the nation’s workforce. As a result, even Alan Greenspan has asked Congress to look at reexamining our immigration policies. Some other statistics that are particularly relevant — more than 60,000 immigrants currently serve on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces and immigrants make up nearly 5 percent of all enlisted personnel on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces. What message are we sending them by singling them out in a resolution? Furthermore, in the last decade, the number of voting-age Latinos rose nationwide by 47%. Latinos as a percentage of the voters nationwide went from 5% in 1996 to 7% in 2000. The second concern of the Suffolk NYCLU with Resolution 42 is that it performs a de-facto endorsement of current immigration law. Our immigration system is broken because it is increasingly disconnected from our nation’s values and economic realities. It keeps families of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents separated for many years, and it meets neither our security nor our economic needs. Tax-paying workers who contribute to our economy lack legal channels to obtain proper documentation and are forced to live underground. Without access to proper channels, smugglers and counterfeiters profit from undocumented workers and people are forced to live an underground existence, hiding from the government for fear of being separated from their families and jobs. The current enforcement system fails to prevent illegal immigration, and precious resources that should be spent on enhancing our security are wasted on stopping hard-working people. Our immigration system needs to be reformed so that legality is the norm, and immigration is legal, safe, orderly, and reflective of the needs of American families, businesses, and national security. We need to focus on terrorists and criminals rather than workers and families, for immigration law, already unnecessarily harsh and intolerant before September 11th, has taken a turn for the worse over the past three years. After September 11th, laws were passed that allowed prolonged detention of immigrants without independent review; allowed surveillance of immigrants based on First-Amendment protected activities; and basically ended the concept of privacy for immigrant students. Current laws are not in keeping with the 14th Amendment requirement that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” We are not just talking about statistics; consider Khurram Altaf, a deportee now in Pakistan after 18 years residence in the United States. He came to the US when he was eighteen, grew his career to the point where he was a general manager for a national truck company with four managers and sixty employees under him. He got married, had three children, and despite embodying the American Dream, was detained and deported without judicial review after September 11th. He did not see his family for a year before they had to leave the United States to be with him. In a New York Times story, he told of how he would call his former employees and they would tell him how much they missed him, “Especially they miss the food. I would cook at home and take it to work – for Christmas or Thanksgiving.” Altaf is one of many, many stories of broken American Dreams — another, Javaid Iqbal, worked at the Seven-11 in Huntington until he was detained for nine months, split from his wife, and ultimately deported while even the Inspector General concluded that the Justice Department has made little effort to distinguish between legitimate terrorism suspects and the many people picked up by chance during the investigation. We are rounding up thousands, burdening our resources as we avoid using discretion, and ripping lives and families in half, often after decades of work. These are not laws that we want to endorse. If you do so with this resolution, then you will also touch upon the Suffolk NYCLU’s third concern. Since resolutions do not carry the force of law, they carry the force of sentiment. The Suffolk County Legislature is a moral voice in our society; you are our civic government and your statements carry great weight. When you pass a resolution that only offers a fist without offering a hand, you are telling the tens of thousands of recent immigrants right here, in our home, that they are unwanted. By asking Congress to enforce immigration laws without asking that they also pass laws that are fair, constitutional and respectful of hardworking families, you are only offering one side of the equation. That one-sidedness is a stark statement. You are using your moral authority, which is perhaps your greatest asset, to endorse intolerance. We are almost all immigrants in this country, and at one time or another, our ancestors were subject to fear, hate and xenophobia because of the smallest of differences. Immigrants from Ireland, from Italy, from Eastern Europe, from China, from Japan — so many of us have a family legacy of overcoming xenophobia that we must not forget what was overcome and force it on those who, simply at this time of history, are in the position of recent immigrants. We have seen the cost of this fear over the centuries in anti-immigrant violence, discrimination and exclusion, and we saw it even a few years ago in our own county when two Mexican day laborers were nearly killed. We need you to lead us forward, toward becoming a greater and stronger community as a sum of our diverse, but shared parts. On Sunday, I was attending a Mets game at Shea, and I looked around and noticed the diverse heritages around me; I was taken aback by how inclusive that small snapshot of America was as we watched the national pastime. Please don’t endorse a Suffolk County that would stand apart from our common heritage. That isn’t our past, and it is not our future. This resolution does not belong in the Suffolk County Legislature. Thank you for your time and dedicated service.