Civil rights leaders call on Corker, Alexander to support DREAM Act
NASHVILLE — A delegation of Tennessee civil rights leaders called for the state’s two Republican senators to immediately support a plan in Congress that will extend protections for undocumented young people.
Black, immigrant and urban-area civil rights leaders said on Wednesday that Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker must throw their support behind the bipartisan DREAM Act, with no added amendments, that will lay permanent protections for so-called Dreamers — young people who were illegally brought into the United States as children.
The call to action follows just weeks after President Donald Trump announced the eventual end of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obamaera executive order that provided protections for over 800,000 young people nationally, including more than 8,000 in Tennessee.
“By establishing DACA, the U.S. made a promise to protect some of its most valuable residents,” said Gloria Sweet-Love, Tennessee State Conference NAACP president, of the program that allowed undocumented young people to live and work here legally.
“In exchange for providing extensive information on themselves, they were given assurances to be free of persecution and deportation.”
The Tennessee NAACP was joined in the call by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and the Knoxville and Chattanooga area Urban Leagues.
The group also asked Alexander and Corker, both Republicans, to also support the bill free of any provisions that could potentially harm the families of Dreamers.
“Their lives shouldn’t be used as political bargaining tool,” said Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition policy director.
The move to reverse the program has drawn strong criticism from those throughout Tennessee, including school district, university and business leaders.
Civil rights leaders nationally have also called for Congress to act.
Before Trump’s announcement, Republican Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery reversed course in his support of a challenge of the DACA executive order.
In a letter to Alexander and Corker, Slatery asked the two to use legislation to replace the program, saying that he said he understood the “human element” of the program that “should not be ignored.”
On Wednesday, the delegation cited Slatery’s words, along with referencing an estimated $300 million dollar economic impact the end of DACA could have in Tennessee.
“There is a human element in the threat to end DACA,” said Phyllis Nichols, president and CEO, Knoxville Area Urban League. “We must not forget what this means for the humanity of the young people.”