US House passes the Dream and Promise Act

We wanted to write you to let you know that The Dream and Promise Act, a bill to protect some immigrant working people and families, passed the House of Representatives on June 4, 2019. The bill, H.R.6, protects Dreamers, TPS holders, and DED holders from further attacks from the Trump administration. It will help stop impending mass deportation of these groups and protect their work permits.

Please contact your Senators to put pressure on the Senate leadership to put this bill up for debate, allow amendments to improve it, and then pass the bill and send it to the White House.

This bill, unlike previous attempts to provide legal protections for immigrants, does not have any tightening of immigration laws, funding for immigration enforcement or detention, or funding for Trump's wall. This is significant because a majority of the House of Representatives has stated clearly that it no longer has to make a trade-off with immigration opponents who want more tools to terrorize immigrant communities at their worksites, in their communities, and at the border in order to provide protection to some immigrants. This is a victory and provides a new baseline for proposal to fix our immigration system, breaking the old paradigm of combining increased enforcement with increased detention to which Congress has been wedded at least since the 1980s and has been a part of all Comprehensive Immigration Reform efforts over recent decades from both Democrats and Republicans.

This bill is far from perfect. It excludes immigrants from its protection who are deemed by the government to be "threats to public safety," who have been convicted of crimes the government labels "gang activity," immigrants who have been put through the juvenile justice system, and some other categories of immigrants. We hope you will join us in working to remove these exceptions to the bill.

Please call your Senators and tell them to bring the Dream and Promise Act up for debate, urge them to remove the harmful exclusions to the bill and then to pass the bill and protect immigrant working people, communities, and families.