USA Today:
By Erin Kelly
March 31, 2015
The
AFL-CIO began a nationwide campaign Tuesday to help thousands of
undocumented immigrants sign up for President Obama's programs to
protect them from deportation and
allow them to work legally in the USA.
The
massive effort is moving forward despite the fact that two of Obama's
three executive actions on immigration have been put on hold because of
court challenges.
More
than 200 union members from 25 states gathered in a Holiday Inn in
Washington for three days of training designed to allow them to return
home and begin helping undocumented
workers seek legal status.
"If
anyone asks you why we're holding this training now, while we wait for a
judge to either clear the way or put up another hurdle, tell them this
progress can be stalled
but it cannot be stopped," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told
members of two dozen unions. "We've come this far. We're going forward.
We will not be turned back."
Union
members will learn how to help people apply for Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects immigrants from
deportation and allows
them to obtain work permits if they came to the U.S. before age 16,
have lived here at least five years, are in school, have graduated from
high school or served honorably in the U.S. military and do not pose a
threat to national security or public safety.
That program began in 2012 and is not one of the executive actions that
has been stalled by the court challenge.
Two
new programs that were scheduled to begin this year — an expansion of
DACA and a program to protect the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens
and legal permanent residents
— have been put on hold. No applications are currently being accepted
by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but union leaders said
they want to be sure that eligible workers know what to do to get ready
to apply if the Obama administration wins the
court challenge.
"We're
going to hold information sessions at union halls to tell people how to
get their documents ready and start saving for the processing fees,"
said Shannon Lederer,
director of immigration policy for the AFL-CIO, which represents 56
unions and more than 12.5 million workers. "We know that hundreds of
thousands of the workers eligible for these programs are union members.
We want the unions to be reliable sources of information
for them."
Union members also will help immigrant workers with "green cards" apply to become U.S. citizens, Lederer said.
The
Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to block a judge's
order that stopped the president from moving forward with his latest
executive actions. Those
actions, announced in November, had been scheduled to begin taking
effect in February. A hearing has been set for April 17.
U.S.
District Court Judge Andrew Hanen, who is based in Brownsville, Texas,
issued an injunction in February to temporarily stop Obama's programs.
The judge did not rule
on the constitutionality of the president's immigration actions but
said the case against them had sufficient merit to warrant the
injunction. The case was filed by Texas and 25 other states who argued
that the president did not have the constitutional authority
to take the actions without the approval of Congress.
More
than 4 million undocumented immigrants could be eligible under Obama's
actions, according to estimates from the non-partisan Migration Policy
Institute.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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