{"id":1021,"date":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp\/index.php\/2005\/02\/08\/joint-letter-to-congress-re-real-id-act-2\/"},"modified":"2021-06-09T17:58:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T17:58:44","slug":"joint-letter-to-congress-re-real-id-act-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2005\/02\/08\/joint-letter-to-congress-re-real-id-act-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Joint Letter to Congress re: REAL ID Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

February 8, 2005
Joint Letter to Congress
REAL ID Act<\/h4>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

PDF version available here.<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

February 8, 2005<\/p>\n

Dear Member of Congress:<\/p>\n

We, the under-signed organizations, urge you to oppose Sections 103 and 104 of the REAL ID Act (H.R.418), which would give the Department of Homeland Security sweeping new authority to deport non-citizens. Anyone who engages in terrorist activity already is inadmissible, deportable, and barred from asylum under a statutory definition of \u201cterrorist activity\u201d so broad that it could, if read for its plain meaning, apply to a prank.<\/p>\n

Sections 103 and 104 would broaden the definition even further, so far that the government would be likely to deport innocent people, even some, paradoxically, who were themselves victims of terrorists. These provisions would:<\/p>\n

  • Make immigrants deportable\u2014and refugees ineligible for asylum\u2014based on the actions of their spouses and parents. If sections 103 and 104 become law, a 13-year-old child threatened with death because her father had joined an insurgency against her country\u2019s government could find herself denied asylum based solely on the fact that she is her father\u2019s daughter. A narrow exception based on lack of knowledge or renunciation of the father’s affiliation would do nothing to protect a child who knew her father had joined a rebel movement, but had no control over his actions, or could not “renounce” an affiliation she never had to begin with.\n
  • Allow immigrants to be deported for exercising rights of free speech that are protected under the U.S. Constitution. Under current law, anyone who engages in or incites terrorist activity is already deportable. Under sections 103 and 104, the 13-year-old girl in the previous example could also be deported\u2014and denied asylum\u2014even if all her father did was write essays justifying armed struggle against a dictatorial regime.\n
  • Greatly broaden the range of groups that could be considered \u201cterrorist organizations\u201d under the law. The REAL ID Act would give the Department of Homeland Security authority to deport a non-citizen for membership in any group, based only on DHS\u2019s contention that it is \u201ca group of two or more individuals, whether organized or not\u201d, which has a subgroup that DHS deems to be terrorist. The REAL ID Act does not limit this authority to senior DHS officials or require that the government provide public notice that it considers such a group to be a terrorist organization.\n
  • Require non-citizens to meet a virtually impossible burden of proof to convince the government that they did not knowingly support terrorism. Our law now makes foreign nationals inadmissible if they knew or should have known that the support they provided to a group would further the group\u2019s terrorist activity. Under the REAL ID Act, a person would be deportable unless he or she could show \u201cby clear and convincing evidence\u201d that he or she did not know that the group they were supporting was a terrorist organization under the law\u2019s extremely broad definition of that term. Since it is almost impossible to prove a lack of knowledge of anything, this standard would make it nearly impossible for an innocent immigrant to defend herself against deportation. This would, for example, allow the deportation of an immigrant who donated money for tsunami disaster relief in the Aceh province of Indonesia, not knowing that the organization that received the funds had a subgroup that DHS considered terrorist.\n
  • Exacerbate a problem that has arisen under current law whereby victims of terrorist or militant groups have been deported or denied asylum because they were subject to extortion by terrorist groups. For example a Colombian rancher who, at the point of a gun, gave cattle to a guerrilla group may already find himself subject to deportation and denied asylum under current law. This would mean that the rancher\u2019s very reason for seeking asylum could bar him from obtaining it. By making people deportable and ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal for any connection to terrorist activity \u2013 even when they bear no personal responsibility \u2013 the REAL ID Act would encourage such extremist interpretations of existing law.\n

    Thank you for your consideration of our views.<\/p>\n

    Sincerely,<\/p>\n

    ORGANIZATIONS<\/u><\/p>\n

    American Immigration Lawyers Association<\/p>\n

    Amnesty International USA<\/p>\n

    Center for Immigrants Rights at the Community Level <\/p>\n

    Center for National Security Studies <\/p>\n

    Center for Victims of Torture<\/p>\n

    Episcopal Migration Ministries<\/p>\n

    Human Rights First <\/p>\n

    Idaho Office for Refugees<\/p>\n

    Irish American Unity Conference<\/p>\n

    Kurdish Human Rights Watch, Inc.<\/p>\n

    Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights<\/p>\n

    National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium<\/p>\n

    National Council of La Raza<\/p>\n

    National Immigration Forum<\/p>\n

    Northwest Immigrant Rights Project<\/p>\n

    Peace Action Wisconsin<\/p>\n

    Tahirih Justice Center<\/p>\n

    The Multiracial Activist<\/p>\n

    Vermont Refugee Assistance<\/p>\n

    Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project<\/p>\n

    Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children<\/p>\n

    World Organization for Human Rights USA<\/p>\n

    World Relief – Chicago<\/p>\n

    INDIVIDUALS*<\/u><\/p>\n

    William J. Aceves, Professor of Law, California Western School of Law, San Diego, CA<\/p>\n

    Jeff Joseph, Senior Partner, Joseph Law Firm, PC, Denver, CO<\/p>\n

    Ira J. Kurzban, Esq., Past president, American Immigration Lawyers\u2019 Association; Author of Kurzban\u2019s Immigration Law Sourcebook<\/i><\/p>\n

    Estelle McKee and Stephen Yale-Loehr, Co-Directors, Cornell Law School Asylum and CAT Appeals Clinic<\/p>\n

    Carlina Tapia-Ruano, American Immigration Lawyers Association, First Vice-President; Illinois Institute of Technology-Kent College of Law, Adjust Professor<\/p>\n

    Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Esq.; Adjunct Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University, Washington D.C.<\/p>\n

    *For individual signers, institutional affiliations are listed for identification purposes only<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    February 8, 2005Joint Letter to CongressREAL ID Act PDF version available here. February 8, 2005 Dear Member of Congress: We, the under-signed organizations, urge you to oppose Sections 103 and 104 of the REAL...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[60,9],"tags":[142],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-to-government-agencies-signed-by-tma","category-advocacy-and-letters","tag-advocacy-letters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Advocacy-Work.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-gt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4013,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/4013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}