UnidosUS Decries the Latest Republican Bait-and-Switch on Immigration

WASHINGTON, DC—Today, UnidosUS (formerly NCLR), the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization, denounced plans by Republican House leadership to advance a wish list of anti-immigrant proposals. House Republican leadership sidelined two bipartisan immigration bills addressing the plight of DREAMers, and is instead bringing to the floor two partisan proposals that worsen the separation of families and expand the persecution of immigrants.

The first is the “Goodlatte Bill,” which UnidosUS and other civil rights organizations have described as a hardliner’s draconian wish list of enforcement provisions that fails to provide a permanent solution for DREAMers. The second—dubbed the “Ryan Bill”—preserves Goodlatte’s most punitive enforcement measures and cuts to legal immigration, while potentially providing a narrow class of DACA recipients a chance at legal status if, and only if, they meet a number of cumbersome eligibility requirements.

“Don’t be fooled. These bills are neither fair nor a ‘compromise.’ Call the Goodlatte and Ryan bills what they are: a bait-and-switch that provides no real or permanent help to DREAMers while funding the Trump administration’s draconian, ineffective, inhumane and deeply unpopular anti-immigrant agenda. There is an attempt to misdirect the public about what these proposals do. Congress should not give in to the administration’s abhorrent and morally bankrupt strategy of holding young children and families, at the border and elsewhere, hostage to get what they want. Republican Members of Congress have a choice to make on whether they stand with children and families or stand for cruelty and inhumanity,” said Janet Murguía, UnidosUS President and CEO.