Kamala Harris released a carefully crafted plan this week to use executive authority to give Dreamers a road map to citizenship. Snowman3 explained just how bold, creative, and legally careful it is here. It is part of her promise for a Fair and Just Immigration System:
- Fight to pass immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people living in our communities and contributing to our economy
- Immediately reinstate of DACA and implement DAPA to protect DREAMers and their parents from deportation
- Restore and expand Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who would face war or catastrophe if forced to return home
- Close private immigrant detention centers
- Increase oversight of agencies like Customs and Border Protection
- Focus enforcement on increasing public safety, not on tearing apart immigrant families
This is not a new priority for her. The daughter of immigrants, she wants us to live up to our promise: “The beauty of the tradition of our country has been to say, when you walk through the door, you are equal.” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia says,“As an immigrant, I’ve seen Kamala Harris fight for immigration reform. She has been a champion for immigrants, DREAMERS, and the undocumented. She’s cultivated a network of allies and activists up and down California. Immigration reform will be a Harris priority.”
A record of leadership as Senator
In Nov. 2016, practically the minute after she was elected (she did need some Doritos therapy first), Senator Kamala Harris used her first public appearance to take a stand with immigrants, joining the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) (LATimes):
"Today we are rededicating ourselves to fighting for the best of who we are. And there are a lot of people, as a result of this election, that are feeling dispirited at best," she said. "Part of what we have to say is that you are not alone, you matter and we've got your back."
This wasn’t just a one-day photo op (Vox):
“I’ve worked with many elected officials and heard many promises, but this was the first time I heard an elected official show up and be there and not shy away after their race was over,” Polo Morales, political director for CHIRLA, told me. “She’s been checking in with immigrant rights groups regularly.”
After entering the Senate in Jan. 2017, she confronted an immediate crisis—the Trump administration’s outrageous, so-called “Muslim ban”. A March 2018 Vogue profile reminds:
IT IS EASY NOW to forget how fast things did happen. “The Muslim ban came down in January and my phone started burning up,” Harris remembers. “Lawyers calling me from the airports saying, ‘Come. We’re here.’ Lawyers I know saying, ‘We’re at the airport and they will not let us talk to the families.’ ” That night Harris phoned then–Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. “His first response was, ‘Why are you calling me at home with this?’ ” Harris says, pausing to register her disbelief. And so it went for months. “In reflection, it was just rapid-fire, and almost everything was unpredictable. There was no preparing for it in any way, strategically or mentally or emotionally.”
What a stark contrast between the administration’s evil+sloppiness+laziness, and Kamala Harris, who is the antithesis of all that. What a massive amount of effort has been spent, by necessity, on emergency response.
Kamala Harris’ first bill as senator, the Feb 2017 Access to Counsel Act (S. 349), included right to counsel and limits to detention of people detained by CBP and ICE. Her first speech defended immigrant communities (transcript) (video). More bills followed—like May 2018’s DONE Act (Detention Oversight, Not Expansion, S.2849), and Oct. 2018’s DHS Body-Worn Camera Act (S.3538). Mitch McConnell digs graves for all bills, but Kamala Harris just keeps reintroducing them.
Los Angeles has more Dreamers than any other city, and Mayor Eric Garcetti has called Harris “the strongest ally we have in the fight” to protect them. Ben Wikler, Washington Director of MoveOn, says, “Harris was the first Senate Democrat to say exactly what activists and those terrified by the threat of deportation for DACA recipients have been waiting to hear.” Kamala Harris cares.
Senator Harris has frequently spoken out against the appalling conditions in immigrant detention centers, and the brutality of family separation—for example, in the June 22, 2018 visit to detained immigrants at Otay Mesa: “And my heart is broken:”
The reality is that this administration brought it upon itself to create a zero-tolerance policy while vilifying a group of people who have traveled through countries seeking asylum, fleeing murder capitals of the world and what do we do? Look at this place behind me, we imprison them. We imprison them. We put them behind barbed wires. I've walked through that. I am a career prosecutor, I have visited many prisons and jails. That is a prison.
There is so much more she has done in the Senate...but I’ll just cover a few of this year’s bills.
Harris-sponsored immigrant rights legislation in 2019
American Dream Employment Act
In April, Sen. Harris introduced legislation to lift the ban on DACA recipients holding paid internships in Congress: the American Dream Employment Act:
“The giant sign outside my office says ‘DREAMers Welcome Here’ because we know and value the contributions that these young people have made to their communities. But right now, those same young people are banned from giving back to their country by working for Congress. That has to change,” said Harris. “Government works best when it reflects the people it represents. Our nation’s DREAMers are some of our best and brightest, and it’s time they had the opportunity to get a job or paid internship on Capitol Hill.”
S.1095 here.
REUNITE Act
Family separation remains a crisis. Feb. 26, Sen. Harris reintroduced the Reunite Every Unaccompanied Newborn Infant, Toddler and Other Children Expeditiously (REUNITE) Act, a bill to reunite immigrant families separated at ports of entry, and to prevent further separations:
“Last year, Americans were shocked to see pictures of children in cages and to hear toddlers crying out for their parents. The administration has failed to live up to their commitment to reunite families separated at the border,” said Harris. “The REUNITE Act would ensure that our government agencies have the resources they need to expedite the process of family reunification. We must do better for these children and families.”
The bill:
- Requires DHS and HHS to publish guidance describing how they will reunify families (without making them pay costs), ensure counsel for children, and include unannounced child welfare inspections.
- Requires immediate reunification of separated children and parents/guardians.
- Creates presumption of release for parents of separated children, and presumption that they will not be deported while their child is in the system or still a minor.
- Prohibits DHS from using DNA or other information obtained fulfilling the bill’s goals, for immigration enforcement purposes.
- And more! S.557 here. (Kamala Harris has also led her colleagues in demanding information and action to reunite families—for example, here.)
Families Not Facilities Act
ICE has arrested at least 170 people who stepped forward to sponsor migrant children. Feb. 7, Sen. Harris reintroduced the Families Not Facilities Act:
“No potential sponsor who intends to build a safe and nurturing home for an unaccompanied immigrant child should be deterred from coming forward due to fear of a civil ICE enforcement action,” said Harris. “This is leaving these vulnerable children to languish in unacceptable conditions in government custody. Unaccompanied children at the border deserve our compassion and assistance, and we must do more to ensure that our government is respecting the human rights and dignity of the youngest among us.”
The bill would:
- Bar ICE from using information provided by unaccompanied migrant children, or the people volunteering to sponsor them, to conduct civil immigration enforcement actions against a child, prospective or current custodian or sponsor, or resident in the home of the prospective or current custodian or sponsor.
- Transfer ICE enforcement funding to the new Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) giving unaccompanied children social services and legal representation. It also transfers funds to the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children Program and the HHS Task Force to Prevent and End Human Trafficking.
- Create an advisory committee of nonprofit immigration and child welfare experts.
S.388 here.
Fairness for Farm Workers Act
This bill, reintroduced by Sen. Harris Feb. 7, would increase labor law protections for agricultural workers, ending exemptions for overtime and minimum-wage requirements for farm workers:
“It is absolutely unconscionable that many farm workers—people who often work over 12 hours a day in the hot sun—do not receive overtime pay for the hard work they do to put food on the tables of American families,” said Harris. “This legislation is a major step towards economic justice for our farm workers, and I’m proud to reintroduce it and continue this fight for basic fairness.”
It amends both the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act. I list it here because its protections would extend to a large number of documented and undocumented immigrants. Hired farm labor is roughly half foreign born, and about 40% are not U.S. citizens. Over 240,000 H-2A (temporary agriculture) visas were issued in 2018. S.385 here.
Of course, this is also a major labor rights bill, aimed at the shameful exemption of some sectors of the labor force (browner and more female by total coincidence, I’m sure) from minimum wage and overtime laws. Farmworker Justice has a factsheet on this bill here.
Legislation Co-Sponsored by Senator Harris
Sen. Hirono’s Immigration Court Improvement Act of 2019 would insulate judges from political interference, including quotas. The bill would also put immigration judges under the applicable Code of Judicial Conduct, not attorney conduct, and make other reforms. Introduced in March--S.663 here.
Also, Sen. Hirono’s bill to provide counsel for unaccompanied migrant children, Fair Day in Court for Kids Act of 2019. S.662 here.
Sen. Markey’s Guaranteed Refugee Admissions Ceiling Enhancement (GRACE) Act, legislation introduced in April, would set a minimum refugee admissions cap of 95,000 per fiscal year. This is in response to the refugee cap being slashed by more than half--from 110,000 to 45,000:
“We cannot allow this administration to abdicate our country’s moral responsibility to welcome children and families fleeing ongoing violence and oppression,” said Senator Harris. “The United States I know is a place where refugees are welcomed and encouraged to contribute to society.”
S.1088 here.
Sen. Patty Murray’s Stop Shackling and Detaining Pregnant Women Act, reintroduced in March:
The bill was first introduced last summer in light of reports of mistreatment of pregnant women in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, and was reintroduced on the heels of a recent Washington Post report about a women in ICE custody whose pregnancy ended in a stillbirth after she went into labor prematurely.
S.648 here.
Sen. Booker’s May 22 PROTECT Immigration Act, which ends the Federal program that authorizes the use of local and state cops as immigration enforcement for ICE. S.1591 here.
Sen. Feinstein’s Agricultural Worker Program Act of 2019, introduced in January, shields farmworkers from deportation and gives them a path to legal status and citizenship:
Under the Agricultural Worker Program Act (S.175), farmworkers who have worked in agriculture for at least 100 days in the past two years may earn “blue card” status that allows them to continue to legally work in the Unites States. Farmworkers who maintain blue card status for the next three years or five years—depending on hours worked in agriculture—would be eligible to adjust to lawful permanent residence (green card).
S.175 here. Farmworker Justice has a factsheet and infographic.
I could keep going—Kamala Harris is listed as sponsor or co-sponsor of more than two dozen Senate bills related to immigration. By my (admittedly incomplete and dubious) count, Sen. Harris appears to have her name on more bills related to immigrant rights than any other senator.
IMMIGRANT ADVOCACY OF KAMALA HARRIS AS DA AND AG
Kamala Harris was committed to the rights of immigrants as San Francisco DA. She created free legal clinics in immigrant-heavy parts of the city. She also cracked down on businesses that exploited undocumented immigrants.
She was attorney general of California when unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central America arrived in 2014. Her then-chief of policy Daniel Suvor (Vox) recalls:
In June 2014, Harris met with a refugee from El Salvador in her office in downtown Los Angeles. Before fleeing the country, the young woman had seen a friend get shot and killed while the two were sitting on a park bench.
Harris took dozens of meetings like that with immigration nonprofits and migrants themselves, including with pregnant women and women who had fled violent abuse in their home countries. “She took it very personally,” Suvor said. “She'd always cared about immigration, but I really think that experience heightened her attention to the issue.”
As Attorney General, Harris also helped craft and implement a policy of giving immigrant crime victims U visas to shield them from deportation. AG Harris translated empathy into action:
The breadth of her work on immigration was vast, by the standards of both supporters and opponents. Harris issued controversial bulletin guidelines to California law enforcement “making clear they could not hold immigrants indefinitely,” Suvor said. She brought high-end California law firms into her AG’s office and connected them with immigration nonprofits. She crafted legislation that put millions of dollars into legal services for the refugees of the child migrant crisis, bringing California state senators into her office to meet with undocumented immigrants.
Contemporaneous coverage in SFGate explains that AG Harris brought together pro bono lawyers and immigrant advocates because her office was barred by law from helping directly.
Kamala Harris was an early supporter of Obama, but she broke with his deportation policy in 2012:
California Attorney General Kamala Harris jumped in to the immigration debate on Tuesday by announcing law enforcement in the state can ignore Obama administration requests to hold undocumented immigrants. Harris said law enforcement agencies were not obligated to comply with the federal law called Secure Communities.
Her expertise is widely acknowledged (Vox):
Valerie Jarrett, who served as a senior Obama White House adviser, even set up conference calls in which Harris explained the policies spearheaded in her office to state attorneys general across the country.
“She has a real-world understanding of how immigration policy intersects [with] criminal justice policy on the ground,” Suvor said. “This stuff is personal to her. She really is an expert on the issues.”
Harris was a champion of President Obama’s executive actions on DACA and DAPA+, and took a personal hand in composing the brief for California in US vs. Texas, which ended with a deadlocked 4-4 Supreme Court killing immigration reform. Kamala Harris learned from that experience, carefully framing her new DACA proposal to avoid the legal issues that tripped up the previous effort. Washington University at St. Louis law professor Stephen Legomsky:
The judge justified his decision by arguing that the establishment of DAPA did not use a specific rule-making process. Harris’s proposal would address this issue, Legomsky noted.
“There are gobs of legal authority to use both deferred action and parole,” Legomsky said.
Kamala Harris figures out how to get it done.
KAMALA NEWS AND VIEWS ON TWITTER
There are about 70 million reasons to support Kamala Harris for President!
Newpioneer has rounded up some highlights of her sponsored legislation here.
snowman3 has rounded up some more legislative highlights here.
Want to know more about her positions and plans? Her policy page is Our America.
Or go straight to an issue: quality, affordable health care for all, economic justice,raising teacher pay, combating the climate crisis, criminal justice reform, action on gun violence, a fair and just immigration system, LGBTQ+ equality, government for the people, debt-free college and student debt, gender equality, American leadership at home and abroad, and fighting for racial justice.
Upcoming Events
June 14-15: On Friday, June 14, and Saturday, June 15, Senator Kamala Harris will return to Nevada to hold campaign events and meet with voters. Harris will speak at the 100 Black Men of America, Inc. 33rd Annual Conference in Las Vegas on Friday along with other events to be announced.
June 17: "The Poor People’s Campaign” holds a ‘Poor People’s’ forum in Washington DC. Kamala Harris and nine other presidential hopefuls will take questions from Rev. William Barber, Rev. Liz Theoharis, and low-income activists.
June 18: Kamala will hold a Reception in Midtown NYC! Check your email and RSVP. Limited tickets available starting at $100, more details closer to event.
June 21: Kamala will be at Rep Clyburn’s Fish Fry in Columbia, South Carolina
June 22: Kamala will participate in Planned Parenthood’s forum on reproductive rights in Columbia, South Carolina.
June 26-27: The first debates will be held in Miami, Florida, and will be broadcast live on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. Kamala Harris will be in the June 27 group.
July 30-31: The second debates will be held on July 30th and 31st in Detroit, Michigan, and will be broadcast live on CNN
Sept 12-13: The third debates will be held on September 12th and 13th, and will be broadcast by ABC and Univision.
Please remember to visit our community group page Kamala2020 and give us a follow! That way all our group efforts will appear in your stream; this makes it easy for everyone to keep up with our latest posts. As always, any who would like to join our group please leave us a comment and we’ll get your invitation right out to you!
If you’d like to volunteer to host one of our Kamala 2020 diaries, please leave your comment in the ”Calling all Volunteers”thread.
Even if you can’t commit to a weekly spot due to your busy schedules, guest bloggers are always welcomed!
Next week’s schedule
Please volunteer! Come share your story about why you support Kamala!
Sunday, June 16 — Diana in NoVa
Monday, June 17 —Onomastic
Tuesday, June 18 — Desert Scientist
Wednesday, June 19—
Thursday, June 20—
Friday, June 21 —
Saturday, June 22 —rflctammt
Sunday, June 23—
Let your voices be heard!
*Please remember this is a Kamala2020 group effort, & not a Daily Kos sponsored activity or endorsement.
While you’re here, don’t forget to visit Kamala’s Official Campaign Website and her Swag Shop for your favorite campaign gear! 😄
If you’re on Twitter, please follow@KamalaHarris and @SenKamalaHarris
(If you’re not on Twitter, bookmark to ersatz follow)
on Instagram: @kamalaharris
and facebook: KamalaHarris
Group Guidelines
The Kamala2020 community group has been created to positively support Senator Kamala Harris, and not to engage in negativity towards other Democrats running in the 2020 primaries.
All should be made to feel welcomed here. What’s not welcomed here is petty bickering over any of our preferred candidates, or personal attacks on fellow Democrats. We’re not responsible for the actions of others who may offend, insult or attempt to sow discord and disunity — that’s on them.
What we are responsible for are our own words and actions — that’s 100% on us.
I’d like to ask all group members, as well as those dropping by who support or are interested in Kamala’s bid for the nomination, that we not respond to negativity from other campaign’s supporters with even more negativity. Let’s do better than our best and respond with respect, humor or try to hold our peace. Recipes and cat pics work, too 😃
Doing no harm costs us nothing... pie-fights will cost us everything.
Tamil movie music by Yuvan Shankar Raja!
Dhanush and Aparna Pillai, from the 2004 film Puthukottaiyilirunthu Saravanan [“yilirunthu” = “from”, a suffix. =Saravanan (name) from Puthukottai (place)]
Music: Yuvan Shankar Raja Lyrics: Na. Muthukumar Playback Singers: Kunal Ganjawala, Hema Sardesai, Nitish Gopal, and Yugendran
(The two characters--with little money and no documents—flee from Singapore[this song] through Malaysia, Thailand, and Burma to India.)
(she): Puthukottai Saravanan -Learn geography
Stare at the sun and know the time...
(he): Went around the world to earn fortune
amidst hot sun and rain—It is life like rainbow
Leaving one’s own street and place
should it be a struggle in an alien land
(she): If you are not near the girl
will you find the way to success
(he): Albeit we live among many complexions and lingo
life with affection at heart will suffice
(she): No rivers without contours--no life without pains
the bamboo too gets hurt...