📩 Letter - People Power United sends a letter to President Biden to provide relief for our undocumented community members

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People Power United joined other local, state, and national groups to send a letter to President Biden to provide relief for our undocumented community members. Shout out to United We Dream for leading this effort. Here is the letter sent on behalf of our People Power United membership:

June 10, 2024

Dear Mr. President, 

As the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) turns 12 on June 15th and faces an existential threat in the courts, we, the undersigned X national, state, and local organizations and community leaders—who collectively represent millions of individuals and families across the country and work in virtually every locality in the U.S.—urge you to act now to provide affirmative relief to long-term undocumented residents of the United States.

The Biden administration has the authority to protect millions of families at serious risk of separation by providing proactive protection and relief for individuals who have been here for decades, building their lives and communities here, raising their families, paying billions in taxes, working and contributing in countless ways to our country. Protecting long-term undocumented residents with affirmative relief is both a moral and political imperative. Americans across the political spectrum strongly support commonsense, compassionate protection from deportation and relief for individuals who have lived in our communities for a long time.

Specifically, you can immediately protect long-term undocumented residents through:

• Granting parole in place for spouses of U.S. citizens;  

• Expanding and renewing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for countries that already meet the statutory requirements; 

• Modernizing existing rules to provide relief for family caregivers (such as by establishing an affirmative process for qualified undocumented individuals to apply for cancellation of removal and adjustment of status); and

• Helping DACA recipients access employment visas (e.g., H-1B).

These proposals have the potential to benefit up to 3 million individuals currently without protection, including hundreds of thousands of immigrant youth who could benefit from these policies. As many as 450,000 undocumented immigrant youth– or about 1 in 5 people eligible in the Senate’s 2023 Dream Act – stand to benefit from the outlined policies. 

These policies are well within your executive power, which has been consistently utilized by both Republican and Democratic administrations alike to grant life-saving relief to individuals and families. Moreover, these types of policies enjoy overwhelming support from the American people, who are eager to see action toward fixing our failed immigration system. This is an opportunity to draw a clear contrast to former President Trump and his allies’ xenophobic demagoguery and hateful anti-immigrant fear-mongering. Bold affirmative relief is the answer to the real threat of a white supremacist agenda that seeks to collapse our entire legal immigration system through military raids across communities and mass deportation camps. 

Millions of immigrant youth and mixed-status families continue to contribute actively to our nation's prosperity while enduring the rise of a xenophobic agenda that has thwarted any bipartisan momentum for commonsense reform in this Congress. 

Ultimately, we know that only Congress can pass legislative solutions that offer permanent protections for the entire immigrant community, and we will continue to work toward that goal. Still, your administration has the power and authority to provide administrative relief to many long-term undocumented individuals in our community, protecting millions of American families and communities in the process. You can protect millions of people and keep American families together right now. We urge you, in the strongest possible terms, not to wait any longer but to act boldly, knowing you have the support of the majority of Americans to provide affirmative relief via executive action to individuals and families right now. 

Sincerely,

******