Representative Goodlatte’s Securing America’s Future Act which included escalated attacks on immigrant communities, failed in the U.S. House of Representatives today. This failed attack on our communities attempted to end the diversity visa program, tear families apart by instituting a family ban, hire thousands more Border Patrol agents, create an abusive farmworker program that targets current workers for deportation, made E-Verify mandatory and increased targeting of sanctuary cities.
“Moving forward with these bills would have been a step in the wrong direction. Representative Goodlatte’s anti-immigrant and anti-worker bill proposed terrible changes to the H-2A Guest-Worker Program that would have lead to wage cuts, job loss, and reduced working conditions for U.S. workers,” said United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez. “The disguised Goodlatte bill was not a compromise, it was an anti-immigrant bill that would have made irreversible and damaging changes to agriculture, and an attempt to build policies that hurt our families, and communities of color across the board,” continued Rodriguez.
“The last few days we have experienced the horror that immigrant families feel every day,” said UFW Foundation Executive Director Diana Tellefson Torres. “Despite all of these images of detained children circulating as a result of Trump’s cruel and inhumane zero-tolerance policy, some members of Congress continued to push for legislation contrary to what the American public is asking for: to keep families together.”
“Yesterday, Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to detain children with their families indefinitely in family internment. The alternative to family separation cannot be family incarceration. Although today we defeated Goodlatte’s ugly attempt at separating more families, we demand the end to family separation and incarceration, a permanent solution for Dreamers and call on our representatives David Valadao and Jeff Denham to step up their leadership,” continued Tellefson Torres.
###