Many people have justified
Rep. Harold Ford Jr.'s support of the conservative right's immigration bill because of the demographics of Tennesee. While not having the immense Latino political clout of states like New York, Florida, California or Texas, the Latino community in Tennesse is not small
and it is growing.
State: Tennessee
State Population: 5,689,261
Latino Population: 135,669
This bill was an atrocity. Do YOU really know what was in the bill? Learn more in extended entry.
From the National Immigration Law Center:
Among its many anti-immigrant provisions, HR 4437 would:
- Make YOU a criminal. H.R. 4437 will allow the government to prosecute almost anyone who has regular contact with an undocumented person.
- Criminalize unlawful presence and make it an aggravated felony, subjecting the entire undocumented population to potential imprisonment and foreclosure of future immigration status. These provisions are likely to drive undocumented immigrants further underground and increase their vulnerability to exploitation.
- Gut judicial review of immigration courts decisions.
- Expand expedited removal near the border so that immigrants will be deported without ever having a chance to make their case in court.
- Make detention of immigrants mandatory.
- Give the government unfettered discretion to designate gangs and makes immigrants deportable as members of a gang even if they have never violated the law and joined a gang out of fear or coercion.
- Create a mandatory Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) radically expands the current I-9 system. It would require employers, unions, day labor sites, worker centers, and many other nonprofit service providers who currently refer or recruit workers use this massive EEVS. It would affect the employment rights of every worker as well as the daily employment decisions of every business and employer in the U.S.