Jill Stein - Presidential Platform
Immigration Reform
Immigrants' rights are human rights.
For hundreds of years immigrants have contributed immensely to the United States despite facing constant exploitation, discrimination, xenophobia and scapegoating.
For decades, US foreign policies of war, intervention, and the "war on drugs" have driven many immigrants to leave their homes under duress to arrive here in dire need.
The Wall Street parties and their wealthy backers use immigrants as essential labor, while denying them the human rights and dignity that everyone deserves.
It's time to completely overhaul this broken and abusive immigration system, as well as the unjust policies driving people to leave their homes.
We need a comprehensive immigration policy and properly funded institutions to ensure a timely, ethical, transparent, and dignified path to citizenship for immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.
Border policy should move away from detention and enforcement response toward humane and effective asylum processing.
This includes full support and funding for coordinated civil society response including social and legal service providers.
Instead of jailing migrants and asylum seekers, we will create non-custodial, humanitarian reception centers at the border.
Migrants should be processed rapidly to screen for significant criminal records. Once processed, migrants should have papers to begin work immediately, making them an invaluable resource for communities.
A Jill Stein administration will:
- Vastly reduce the tide of migration by ending the crises driving people to migrate in the first place:
- Ending US wars and military interventions (250 in the past 30 years per the Congressional Research Service)
- Reducing climate migration through an emergency Green New Deal and eliminating fossil fuel emissions within a decade
- Ending US economic sanctions driving migration from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua
- Legalizing marijuana in the US and supporting legalization in Latin America to undercut drug cartels whose violence is a major driver of migration
- Abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and establish an Office of Citizenship, Refugees, and Immigration Services under the Department of Labor. Redirect all ICE funding to processing centers that provide immigrants and refugees with resources for housing, work, and healthcare upon arrival]
- Prosecute all ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who have committed human rights violations
- Repeal the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (https://www.alianzaamericas.org/toolkits/its-time-to-repeal-iirira/?lang=en#)
- Repeal the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act
- Grant amnesty to every undocumented person in the United States, and implement a path to citizenship with expediency
- Provide whistleblower visas for immigrants who report labor violations or exploitative work conditions
- Expand refugee programs and improve the housing conditions for all refugees during resettlement
- Remove stringent requirements for linguistic assimilation and employment, and expand mental health services for refugees
- Expand the number of visas available to immigrants
- Greatly increase humanitarian aid to struggling Latin American economies, especially for countries that have been devastated by U.S. intervention
- End US sanctions in general, which are illegal in any event. They should most immediately be ended where they devastate economies in Latin America and fuel immigration, as in Cuba and Venezuela
- End the War on Drugs
- Take immediate action to locate separated children and reunite them with their families
- Direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and provide them resources to adjudicate visa petitions within 30 days, instead of the current 2 years or more, to shorten the duration of Family Separation for legal immigrants and citizens
- Fully staff and fund immigration courts
- Hire more asylum officers and provide exclusive jurisdiction to adjudicate asylum cases
- Ensure all immigration judges have civil service protection
- Ensure that due process and constitutional protections are available to undocumented immigrants when it comes to deportation issues
- Repeal section 212(a)(9)(B)(ii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act concerning Accruing Unlawful Presence
- Support DACA by updating the registration date of the 1929 Registry Act to 1/1/2022, and restoring Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which expired in April 2001. This will allow people who have approved petitions to apply for their Green Card upon payment of a fine for the filing fee.
- Reduce the record number of detainees currently under DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) control.
~ no one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land
Warsan Shire, Home