Diverse Group of Maine Organizations Urges Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Over 50 Religious Leaders Sign Letter to Maine’s Senators

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, March 27, 2006
Contact: Shenna Bellows, MCLU Executive Director, 774-5444

Portland – Over 100 activists gathered in Monument Square today to call for fair immigration law reform.  As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to send pending immigration legislation to the Senate floor, the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, the Maine Council of Churches, the Maine Civil Liberties Union, and members of Maine’s immigrant community urged Maine’s lawmakers to support changes to the bill to better protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons in the country.

“This bill is unfair and flawed in so many ways,” said Beth Stickney, Executive Director of the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project.  “Our Senators should support immigration reform that will not criminalize immigrants and that will provide paths to faster family reunification and legal residency for workers.”

The bill, the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006," is expected to be brought to the Senate floor sometime this week. Several Maine organizations are concerned that some provisions of the underlying measure would expand deeply flawed policies that have already eroded due process and civil liberties.

The Senate bill would make it a crime to lack valid immigration documents, making it impossible for many undocumented persons to ever obtain legal residency status even if they are already on waiting lists and have relatives with citizen or permanent resident status.

Under the Senate bill, the government would be given extraordinary powers to detain non-citizens indefinitely without meaningful review. This move would potentially place many non-citizens in a legal "black hole" that subjects them to a life sentence after having served a criminal sentence, or, in some cases, without ever having been convicted of a crime.

“Sacrificing the constitutional rights and civil liberties of both citizens and non-citizens is never an effective substitute for establishing fair and adequate law,” said Shenna Bellows, Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union.  “So many U.S. citizens welcome immigrants and want rational, humane, workable immigration reform.”

The Senate bill includes provisions that have caused deep concern among civil libertarians, immigrant rights activists, business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and leaders of the faith community.  Last week, a broad coalition over 50 organizations and leaders in Maine’s faith community signed on to a letter to Maine’s Senators urging them to support safe and humane immigration reform. 

The letter, signed by Maine’s Roman Catholic Bishop, Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders, and several faith-based organizations calls on our elected officials “to ensure that any new immigration legislation balances concerns for national security with commitment to family unification, and balances enforcement with concerns for the dignity and worth of every human being.” 

“Our lawmakers should heed this call for fair and comprehensive immigration reform that is coming from such a diverse group of Mainers” said Stickney.  “The character of our nation is at stake in this debate.”

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