Oppose Citizenship Checks of Those Arrested in VA!

Three anti-immigrant bills recently passed the Virginia House of Delegates and will be considered in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee beginning Feb 22 at 1:30pm and in the full Senate as early as Friday, Feb 24. If you did not already write a letter or email as part of Sunday’s Write Here! Write Now! Activity, please do so right away.

HB 1060 and HB 958 would require law enforcement officers to make citizenship inquiries of everyone arrested for any offense. They would also require an officer who finds "probable cause" to consider that the person is not legally present in the U.S. to inform the judicial officer, who would decide on that basis whether or not to grant bail. These bills would:

*require an immigration status check for everyone for even the most minor offenses (a broken tail light or loitering);
*encourage racial profiling by allowing police officers to determine “probable cause” that a person may be undocumented (e.g., based on language or appearance);
*take police officers off the streets and impose an unfunded mandate on localities for additional officers; and
*further erode the relationship between immigrant communities and law enforcement and discourage innocent victims from reporting crimes.

This legislation would tear families apart and send people to detention centers whose only “crime” is a minor civil offense, or who have committed no crime at all but simply called the police to report a crime or ask for help (e.g., a victim of domestic violence). They will harm many innocent people and are NOT the solution to our immigration problems.

HB 1001 directs the Superintendent of State Police to sign a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as authorized under 8 U.S.C. 1357(g), to permit the State Police to enforce federal immigration laws. The state police should not be the enforcement mechanism for federal regulations. In any case, the Governor has already asked the Secretary of Homeland Security to enter into such an agreement, so the law is unnecessary.

Make your voice heard!
1) Call, email, or write a letter to your state senator opposing these bills;
2) Call or email friends, family, and other UUCA members asking them to contact their state senators now; and
3) If you know anyone in other VA UU churches or have friends or family in other parts of the state, ask them to contact their senators also.

Contact information for the Virginia state senators and UU churches in other parts of the state is attached.

WHO’S MY STATE SENATOR? Go to the Virginia General Assembly website, www.legis.state.va.us and click on “Who’s My Legislator?” at the top of the page.

The following website provides the status of immigration–related bills in the VA General Assembly: www.richmondsunlight.com/bills/tags/immigration/

Sponsored by the Immigration Working Group. Contact: Louise Van Horne, l_vanhorne@verizon.net or Marilyn Baker, mbaker@nas.edu.

Virginia%20State%20Senators%20Feb%202012.docx

VA%20UU%20CONGREGATIONS%20AND%20THEIR%20STATE%20SENATORS-5.docx