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Republicans Show They Still Don’t Get it on Immigration, Citizenship, Family Visas

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Yesterday was a busy day in immigration, one in which some Republicans made clear that they still don’t really get it when it comes to immigration reform.

CPAC, the conservative political action conference, actually held a panel with pro-immigration reform advocates yesterday morning, including pollster Whit Ayres and executive director of the American Action Network Jennifer Korn.  Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) made headlines when he said that he believed Obama was being “sincere” on immigration—but then pivoted to a position he’s been criticized for before, supporting immigration reform without a path to citizenship.

Said Labrador, “It would be a travesty in my opinion to treat those who violated our laws to get here much better than those who have patiently waited their turn to come to the United States.”

As we said to Jeb Bush: citizenship is an American value.  It speaks directly to the heart of who we are as a nation.  To create a permanent class of second-class residents who will never hold a full stake in the country they call home is literally un-American.  And we won’t support attempts at legislation that leave citizenship out.

Ultimately, CPAC yesterday was no love-fest for immigration. As TPM’s Benjy Sarlin reported, Rick Perry was later booed for calling for Latino outreach.  And the schedule looks like it goes downhill from here: the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA is scheduled to speak on a panel with Pamela Gellar, Frank Gaffney, and other “uninvited” radicals tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the second half of yesterday focused on families and how immigration reform might affect family-based visas.  On Capitol Hill, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the separation of families, in which Rep. Steve King (R-IA) accused witnesses of supporting open borders and Raul Labrador apparently refused to believe that people might ever be forced to leave their families behind in order to seek a better life.

As NCLR Director of Immigration and National Campaigns Clarissa Martinez-de-Castro tried to explain, “If your only person in the world is your brother or sister, that is your family.”

Shot back Labrador, “Then why did you leave them to begin with?”

Then there was the Washington Post’s revelation that the Senate Gang of 8 working on immigration reform is considering legislation that would make it harder for US citizens to sponsor family members.

As Gang of 8 member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “the goal for me is to replace a chained migration immigration system with an economic-based immigration system.”

Seriously?  We get that it’s CPAC, and conservatives are trying to shore up their credentials.  But the positions they’re taking on immigration is a quick ticket to nowhere.  Just as immigration reform must include a pathway to citizenship, it must help keep families together and fix a broken system responsible for keeping families apart for years or decades.  Instead of trying to pit immigrants against each other, high-skilled against low-skilled, family-based versus economic-based, legislators should realize that immigrants contribute to our nation by strengthening our economy and strengthening our families.  And they can do both at the same time.

As United We DREAM says in their latest statement:

What ties us together as a diverse immigrant community is our commitment not only to this country, but also to our families, and our immigration policies should reflect our country’s values. Our 11 Million Dreams campaign is all about sharing the stories of our families and our parents, the original dreamers, and fighting for a fair shot at citizenship for all of us.  Politicians who try to spin our immigration system as a zero-sum game are denying the realities families live every day.

Yesterday we released a statement arguing that passing immigration reform will help Republicans compete for Latino voters.  But only if reform is done right.  That means legislation that makes sense for our families and treats immigrants like the full Americans they already consider themselves to be.  Anything less is no dice.