FCNL Statement of Principles on Immigration Reform

Nov 18, 2009

"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
~Micah 6:8 (King James)

As people of faith guided by the spiritual values of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), our work on immigration is led by the call for right relationships among people and between individuals and God. We believe that respect for human and civil rights is essential to safeguarding the integrity of our society and the inherent dignity of all human beings. We recognize that governments have an indispensable role in upholding these rights and that citizens have the responsibility to make governments more responsive, open, and accountable.

Therefore, we call for humane comprehensive immigration reform. We have seen the degeneration of the U.S. immigration system over the last twenty years. Overly punitive laws in tandem with increased enforcement and an inefficient bureaucracy have led to systemic violations of rights: indiscriminate raids, detention without due process, worker exploitation, and families separated for years or even decades. Humane immigration reform would restore integrity to the U.S. tradition of welcoming immigrants and provide real solutions to a broken immigration system.

We believe that fundamental and comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy is needed in order to:

• Create an orderly, equitable, and efficient legal immigration system;


• Protect employment and labor rights for all workers, regardless of immigration status;


• Protect human and civil rights for immigrants currently living in the United States;


• Support communities with large concentrations of immigrants and facilitate immigrant integration; and


• Align enforcement with humanitarian values.

To meet these principles, the following eight elements should be included in comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

One. Realistic Legal Avenues for Future Migration
Recognizing the importance of immigrant labor in the U.S. economy, we call for an expansion of legal avenues for workers (including low-skilled workers) to migrate to the United States in a safe and orderly manner. These new legal avenues must protect immigrant workers' rights, including the ability to bring their families with them, to change their place of employment, and to apply for lawful permanent status and eventual citizenship. Such avenues must be designed to meet the legitimate needs of the economy without undercutting workers already in the United States.

Two. Family Unity
Recognizing the critical role of family in the development of healthy individuals and communities, immigration policies should make reunification of spouses, parents, children, and siblings a top priority, and should include families headed by same-sex couples as well as opposite-sex couples. Reform of the family immigration system should retain family preference categories at adequate levels, augment per-country caps, remove bars to reentry and adjustment of status for those seeking to reunite with family, and eliminate lengthy visa backlogs by recapturing immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delays and rolling them over to the next fiscal year. Spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents should be reclassified as immediate relatives to ensure that these individuals are reunited as quickly as possible. Family visas should not be placed in competition with employment visas.

Three. Protection for Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Other Displaced Persons
Immigration policies should support openness to refugees and those seeking asylum. We live in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, and our planet is undergoing potentially dramatic climate changes that threaten to displace millions of people. Refugee and asylum policy should support those displaced by conflict, oppression, environmental change, natural disaster, and economic destitution.

Four. An Equitable Path to Legal Status and Eventual Citizenship
Immigration reform must create a reasonable and inclusive path for undocumented immigrants, multi-status families, refugees, and asylees to regularize their status and earn eventual citizenship. Such a program must be workable and not hindered by overly punitive criteria.

Five. Protection for All Workers
Immigration policies should coordinate with labor, health and safety laws to ensure that all people can work with dignity. Laws governing wages, hours, health, and safety should be strictly enforced, the ability to organize protected, and remedies to redress workplace grievances made available to all workers, regardless of immigration status. Abiding by strict labor and employment laws would remove the economic incentive for employers to import undocumented and temporary labor, practices which can be used to undercut wages, job security, and working conditions for those already in the United States. Immigration policies should augment the Department of Labor's ability to enforce labor laws, not hinder it by creating a climate of fear that employers can use to exploit immigrant workers. Indiscriminate home and workplace raids should be eliminated and employer audits should be the primary workplace enforcement mechanism.

Six. Immigrant Integration
Immigration policies should support communities with high concentrations of immigrants and facilitate immigrant integration. The U.S. immigration system should ensure that communities are able to welcome immigrants by providing federal support to state and local governments and organizations to provide multi-lingual and civics education, outreach, and naturalization assistance. The immigration system should ensure that all immigrants, regardless of status, have access to social services such as health care and education.

Seven. Due Process Protection and Reformed Detention Policies
All persons, regardless of immigration status, should be afforded due process protection. Due process protection for immigrants includes-but is not limited to-the end of mandatory detention and expedited removal, access to legal counsel and law libraries, access to legal orientation programs, access to translation and interpretation services, independent judicial review of individual circumstances before removal, and the ability to challenge detention before an independent judicial body in a timely manner.

Detention policies should be reformed to uphold human and civil rights. To establish a presumption against detention, alternatives to detention programs should be implemented nationwide and individualized assessments should guide determinations of the necessity and appropriateness of detention. Alternatives to detention should use the least restrictive means necessary; alternatives should include not only electronic supervision or reasonable reporting requirements but also non-custodial community-based programs. Vulnerable populations such as asylum-seekers, torture survivors, victims of human trafficking, children, sole guardians and caregivers, pregnant women, individuals with significant medical needs, mentally ill individuals, lawful permanent residents, and LGBT individuals should be released from custody or provided with a non-custodial alternative to detention.

Binding detention standards should be developed to ensure access to basic rights, such as adequate access to medical and mental health care, access to telephones, access to religious services, access to recreation, and contact visits with families. Detention standards should also protect detainees from sexual abuse, overcrowding, unnecessary restraints, and arbitrary transfer. Immigration detainees held under administrative detention should be kept separate from individuals in criminal custody. An independent oversight agency should be established to investigate, evaluate, and report on compliance. Detainees should have the ability to make confidential complaints directly to this agency.

The vast majority of individuals detained and deported each year are nonviolent offenders. In order to realign its policies with its objective of focusing on individuals who pose a threat to national security or public safety, the Department of Homeland Security should screen individuals suspected of immigration violations at the point of conviction, not at the point of apprehension.

Eight. Enforcement Aligned with Humanitarian Values
Repairing the legal immigration system is the critical first step to establishing humane enforcement policies. A working legal system will integrate immigrants into society, reduce pressure on the border, and allow federal agencies to focus on national security concerns as well as the illegal trafficking of drugs, arms, and persons across maritime and land borders.

Immigration enforcement must be realigned with humanitarian values. The militarization of the border, including the construction of physical and virtual fences, does not effectively stem undocumented migration, yet such policies have desecrated sacred religious sites, violated numerous environmental laws and protections, and induced human and civil rights abuses. Border communities should be directly involved in the decision-making processes regarding border enforcement policies.

Federal immigration laws should be enforced by federal authorities. ICE ACCESS programs implemented by state and local law enforcement agencies, including the fundamentally flawed 287(g) program, allow for racial profiling while distracting officers from their primary task of promoting the safety and security of communities. Such programs should not be a part of a reformed U.S. immigration system. PDF Version