THE DANGEROUS SCOPE OF THE LAKEN RILEY ACT
On Tuesday, the House passed the Laken Riley Act, a dangerous anti-immigrant bill introduced by Republicans last year meant to jumpstart mass roundups and detentions and further scapegoat immigrants. This proposal should really be called the Ken Paxton Empowerment Act, because it would give enormous power to him and his fellow radical attorneys general and does nothing to keep communities safe. Despite concerns around the proposal, 48 House Democrats joined Republicans in approving the bill, and it now stands a chance of passing the Senate. But as we highlighted over at Substack, Democrats should know that supporting the Ken Paxton Empowerment Act will not insulate them from future nativist attacks. Republicans will instead see an unmitigated victory and press harder to advance their cruel agenda. “Despite the name of the legislation and the messaging focus of some of its backers, the Laken Riley Act is filled with unrelated and sweeping measures that won’t improve public safety,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “Instead, this bill would empower state anti-immigrant zealots to take the reins of federal immigration policy while throwing our out-of-date immigration system into more chaos. Those touting this bill as a necessary policy – or political – way forward should get their facts straight and give a closer reading to the bill text and dangerous implications.” Read more here.
REFLECTIONS ON JAN. 6 AND THE ROLE OF NATIVISM
Earlier this week, the U.S. Congress peacefully certified the results of the 2024 presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris presiding over the Electoral College count. It’s a startling contrast from four years ago, when Donald Trump, following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, incited his supporters to violently attack the U.S. Capitol in order to block certification of his rightful defeat. As Republicans are now pushing anti-immigrant legislation as one of their first actions of 2025, the anniversary of the bloody events of Jan. 6 should serve as a reminder that those truly threatening our democracy and orchestrating political violence are not immigrants, but instead the ascendant right-wing movement that trampled on core democratic values that day, said Cárdenas. “As we reflect on the horrors of four years ago and prepare for the incoming administration, we should not just view January 6th as a tragic and indelible day for our country that must never be forgotten, but also recognize that the threats to American democracy are ongoing and understand the role nativist conspiracies play in the right-wing pursuit of power.” Read her full statement here.
TRUMP 2025: DISINFORMATION, UNCERTAINTY, AND MIGRATION EXTREMISM
In her weekly column, Maribel Hastings writes that although the results of the 2024 election were peacefully certified, a second Trump term means a return to the chaos and conflict that has characterized the president-elect since he first descended the golden escalators of Trump Tower to call Mexicans criminals and “rapists” in June 2015. Last week we already got a little taste of what’s to come, she writes. “Following the terrorist attack in New Orleans, which claimed the lives of 15 people and wounded many others, Trump, Fox News, and other Republican figures immediately blamed immigrants and the immigration system,” including falsely claiming that the attacker had recently crossed the southern border. But as reporting confirmed, the attacker was a U.S. citizen from Texas. “Did Trump retract his declarations? Of course not.” Hastings also notes chaos within the Trump team itself, like the debate over H-1B visas for specialized foreign workers, which has pitted the likes of Stephen Miller against billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. “But outside of that topic, they are all united in their deep disdain and prejudice toward undocumented immigrants who continue to be at the center of Trump’s plans in 2025, when his threats could become reality,” Hastings concludes. Her column was also published in several outlets, including La Opinión, Radio Bilingüe, and La Tribuna Hispana. Read her column in English here and Spanish here.
WHAT SPECIAL ELECTION WINS IN VIRGINIA CAN TELL US
In the first special elections of 2025, Virginia Democrats won two key state races across the commonwealth, solidifying their majorities in both the Virginia House of Delegates and State Senate. Not only do the wins by Kannan Srinivasan, the first Indian American immigrant elected to serve in the House of Delegates, in Senate District 32 and JJ Singh, the son of Indian immigrants, in House District 26 allow Democrats to maintain control of the state’s legislature, they should carry national significance as proof of Democratic enthusiasm in a second Trump era. After all, in the lead-up to the Virginia contests, the national political media bought into their own narrative that Democrats were in serious trouble. Well, that narrative should have been shattered on Jan. 7. Democrats passed that “first test” big time and do, in fact, have enthusiasm. What do these election results mean for the politics of immigration? It’s not that Trump won more people over to his side with his racist, xenophobic campaign. Instead, Democrats just didn’t provide enough of an alternative while dealing with worldwide anti-incumbent sentiment. Learning the wrong lessons from the elections results in bad political choices. Acquiescing to Trump and Congressional Republicans’ mass deportation agenda because you have fallen for the political spin of a nativist mandate is the wrong lesson. A different lesson could be providing a story that rebuts the lie that our immigrant neighbors are to blame for all of our problems and proposes solutions, not scapegoats. Read more here.
‘UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS PAY MORE THAN THEIR FAIR SHARE OF TAXES’
We love this recent The Hill op-ed by Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy Senior Policy Analyst Marco Guzman on the huge contributions made by undocumented immigrants annually. “According to an in-depth analysis (to which I contributed) by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the undocumented population in 2022 paid almost $97 billion in taxes, with over $54 billion in payments to the federal government and more than $37 billion paid out to states and localities,” he writes. It’s especially important as we enter a heightened era of disinformation and nativism. Click here to help share the facts.
HOW TO HELP IMMIGRANTS IMPACTED BY THE L.A. FIRES
Our hearts are with everyone impacted by the devastating Los Angeles fires, which have killed at least ten people and destroyed thousands of structures in the area. According to our friends at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), those displaced include undocumented workers like day laborers and mixed-status families who face the added burden of fear when it comes to seeking emergency services. NDLON has created a fund to assist these community members in their recovery and ensure that the Pasadena Community Job Center, which has been serving as an emergency center for the day laborer community, can continue its critical work during this time. You can click here to donate. It’s also important to remember that as L.A. will soon hopefully begin to rebuild, it’s these same immigrant workers who will be critical in recovery efforts, as journalist León Krauze reminds us. “Immigrant labor has already been vital in the recovery of other U.S. cities devastated by natural disasters,” he writes. “For example, after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017, more than half of the construction workers involved in rebuilding efforts were immigrants.” Yet these essential workers are now under direct threat by the incoming Trump administration. “It will be a moral failure that as immigrants work to get Southern California back on its feet … they will be doing so under threat of family separation.”
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