***Absolutely horrible new law that punishes social workers; H.R. 4437***

tjwash

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Fri Mar-03-06 03:13 PM
Original message

Edited on Fri Mar-03-06 03:56 PM by tjwash

I normally don�t get too involved in immigration, or illeg***Absolutely Horrible Law that punishes Social Workers; H.R.al immigration issues. However my wife, who is a social worker, brought this to my attention.

A new law was recently passed on Dec. 17th of 2005; H.R. 4437 The Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. It was sponsored by James Sensenbrenner, and passed with 92 percent of Republicans for, and 82 percent of Democrats against.

In a nutshell, the law states that any church or non-profit organization is guilty of committing a federal offense, if they give any assistance whatsoever to illegal immigrants. It makes no difference if the organization in question, has any knowledge the status of the person they are helping or not. The penalties include fines, jail time, and property seizure.

The big problems with the law, are, that it does nothing to strengthen the borders, and curb the flow of illegal immigration. It punishes non-profit social assistance organizations, and churches that may be feeding, or providing shelter to illegal aliens, even though they may not know that they are illegal. The kick in the head from this whole thing? There is nothing in the law that punishes the for-profit places that continue to exploit illegal labor, such as Farms, Hotels, or Restaurants.

Say someone like my wife is working at her job in the domestic violence shelter. A woman shows up there, beaten, and bloody, with a kid in tow with her abusive boyfriend driving around looking for her. She places this woman in a VDV center. It turns out later that this woman produced a fake ID. They can throw my wife in jail, and the shelter can get fined, and eventually get shut down because their funding gets yanked.

And there are many other possible scenarios that can be made out here. Someone shows up to a free clinic with a case of pneumonia. Oh, you can�t produce an ID, and you have brown skin. Could you kind of out in the street and slowly suffocate please?

Someone comes to a shelter that�s starving, and it�s 10 degrees below zero outside and they need assistance. Sorry, you can�t produce your papers, do us a favor and crawl into the alley and die will you?

The ones that get fined and punished because of this new law, are people who have dedicated their lives to helping out others in need that are less fortunate than us. Most unfortunate people that happen to need help, are not what we would consider the cream of our society. And yes, illegal immigrants happen to be part of that. Yes, I know. It�s a horrible thing, helping out someone that everyone else despises isn�t it? Hell that may be something that Christ would have actually done.

Excellent article from The independent media center of Philadelphia.

This law also turns any relative, employer, co-worker, or friend of who helps an undocumented migrant an "alien smuggler" and a felon, punishable by imprisonment. The criminalized forms of assisting an undocumented immigrant could be as innoccous as driving a neighbor to the grocery store or providing shelter to a survivor of domestic violence. It is in direct violation of the Civil Rights Act, which states that public services cannot be denied on the basis of national origin; suddenly, hospital emergency rooms would have to ask for immigration documents before admitting a pregnant woman. An undocumented woman could call the police on her abusive husband and find herself locked up instead, for the "crime" of living in the United States without a visa. This law would empower police to demand "papers" of anyone, at any time, forcing even United States citizens to carry proof of their US Citizenship with them at all times. It would open the door for selective enforcement to be used for purposes of ethnic and political intimidation. It would criminalize student visa holders who drop a class or work visa holders who change jobs. It would put three million US Citizen children of undocumented immigrants in danger of losing their parents at any minute. The bill would also make it much easier for US government officials to deny citizenship to lawful permanent residents (green card holders) who apply for naturalization, at their own discretion and on the basis of secret evidence that is not subject to review.

This law, is a disaster. It helps no one, and only adds to the mountains of bureaucracy that NFP social assistance organizations already have to endure. Like it or not, the reality is, that there are people here illegally. There are those here that do not like that, and to them I say, too fucking bad, that�s reality, deal with it.

The scariest ramifications of this law, is that it also gives the feds license to check our �papers� anytime they want.

I don�t know about any of you out there, but the thoughts of a Gestapo asking for �your papers please� and doing it in the name of �the homeland� sends a cold chill down my spine.

So go ahead, flame me for giving a shit...