wantmygcnow
Volunteer Moderator
Something new I saw in an article i read that asylees may be sent back if real id is passed....please read below
In an act that smells entirely of xenophobia, the US administration is in the last stages of passing an anti-immigration law that will empower the authorities to take draconian steps against anyone they think is an illegal alien.
Called the Real ID act, it has already sailed through the House of Representatives and is well on the fast track to clearance in the Senate, where it is attached to the Iraq funds request, which will ensure it gets passed pronto to became law.
According to Dawn, this "Real ID act, if enacted, would give the Secretary of Homeland Security unlimited powers. Immigrants will no longer be able to obtain driver's licenses or car insurance. Police can randomly stop an immigrant and ask him to prove his status and can arbitrarily detain him."
Even the right to habeas corpus can be affected adversely (a law requiring a detained person to be brought before a judge, especially to investigate the lawfulness of their detention – the most important writ in a free and democratic world).
This new law will give the police power to arbitrarily stop anyone they consider to be suspicious and hold them indefinitely or even deport them.
Not only will it negatively impact immigrants in US (illegal or otherwise) it will also target would-be asylum seekers fleeing political or religious persecution. They will have to provide documented evidence in support of their application. Also, it may even stretch to making those who already obtained asylum, by making them go back if US thinks conditions, from where these people fled, are all right now.
The act will further tighten the bail process, making it exceedingly difficult for immigrants awaiting hearings on their court cases to be released on bail – even murder-accused in US often get bail.
"In the name of national security, the immigrants are being stripped of their basic rights," says Aarti Shahani of Families for Freedom, a multi-ethnic defence network for immigrants fighting deportation.
According to Dawn, On April 14, the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization for 150 groups that work with immigrants and refugees, sent a letter to senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer urging them "to take a strong public position against the Real ID Act and to do everything they can to stop this anti-immigrant proposal from passing in Congress."
"Simply put," the letter read, "the Real ID Act is blatantly an anti-immigrant legislation masquerading as a national security initiative."
Sponsors of the bill, which was written by Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and member of the Conservative Political Action Conference, say that by increasing restriction on immigration, they are protecting the United States against future terrorist attacks because perpetrators of 9/11 were all immigrants.
Immigration judges who do not believe the immigrants' claims could order them deported even before their appeals run out, and federal courts would no longer have recourse to step in.
The Bush administration is seeking to deny basic human rights to people in the name of security and this will just ensure an inequitable system from which will rise many cases of wrongful confinement. It may even throw up Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison kind of abuse of those imprisoned.
In an act that smells entirely of xenophobia, the US administration is in the last stages of passing an anti-immigration law that will empower the authorities to take draconian steps against anyone they think is an illegal alien.
Called the Real ID act, it has already sailed through the House of Representatives and is well on the fast track to clearance in the Senate, where it is attached to the Iraq funds request, which will ensure it gets passed pronto to became law.
According to Dawn, this "Real ID act, if enacted, would give the Secretary of Homeland Security unlimited powers. Immigrants will no longer be able to obtain driver's licenses or car insurance. Police can randomly stop an immigrant and ask him to prove his status and can arbitrarily detain him."
Even the right to habeas corpus can be affected adversely (a law requiring a detained person to be brought before a judge, especially to investigate the lawfulness of their detention – the most important writ in a free and democratic world).
This new law will give the police power to arbitrarily stop anyone they consider to be suspicious and hold them indefinitely or even deport them.
Not only will it negatively impact immigrants in US (illegal or otherwise) it will also target would-be asylum seekers fleeing political or religious persecution. They will have to provide documented evidence in support of their application. Also, it may even stretch to making those who already obtained asylum, by making them go back if US thinks conditions, from where these people fled, are all right now.
The act will further tighten the bail process, making it exceedingly difficult for immigrants awaiting hearings on their court cases to be released on bail – even murder-accused in US often get bail.
"In the name of national security, the immigrants are being stripped of their basic rights," says Aarti Shahani of Families for Freedom, a multi-ethnic defence network for immigrants fighting deportation.
According to Dawn, On April 14, the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella organization for 150 groups that work with immigrants and refugees, sent a letter to senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer urging them "to take a strong public position against the Real ID Act and to do everything they can to stop this anti-immigrant proposal from passing in Congress."
"Simply put," the letter read, "the Real ID Act is blatantly an anti-immigrant legislation masquerading as a national security initiative."
Sponsors of the bill, which was written by Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and member of the Conservative Political Action Conference, say that by increasing restriction on immigration, they are protecting the United States against future terrorist attacks because perpetrators of 9/11 were all immigrants.
Immigration judges who do not believe the immigrants' claims could order them deported even before their appeals run out, and federal courts would no longer have recourse to step in.
The Bush administration is seeking to deny basic human rights to people in the name of security and this will just ensure an inequitable system from which will rise many cases of wrongful confinement. It may even throw up Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison kind of abuse of those imprisoned.
