More protection for refugees through bill
A new California bill pushes back against a 2019 executive order by President Donald Trump that limits refugee resettlement.
The bill, co- authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar- Curry, whose district includes Woodland, will prevent California cities from withholding consent to continue allowing refugees no matter their sex, age, sexual orientation or ethnicity.
“It’s shocking to live here in the United States of America and people aren’t welcome,” Aguiar- Curry said. “That bill was one of those bills that helps me sleep at night.”
Aguiar- Curry’s bill, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and met with zero opposition, was created in response to Trump’s 2019 Federal Executive Order 13888 that generally prohibits a refugee to resettle in a state or locality without consent from the state and locality where the refugee would live.
“The past 10 to 15 years, it’s really gotten so bad and I can’t live with that,” AguiarCurry said. “This isn’t the American that I’ve known and how I was raised.”
The Trump Administration reduced the number of refugees allowed to resettle to 50,000 in 2017 and has continued to reduce the cap each year. Trump approved a State Department plan in Nov. 2019 to reduce 2020’ s number to 18,000 refugees, according to the Associated Press.
An average of about 67,100 refugees arrived in the United States each year from fiscal year 2008 to 2017, according to the Pew Research Center. Aguiar- Curry said she grew up in a small town where color wasn’t an issue and everybody worked together, went to school together and danced together.
“I just figured everybody was the same, not thinking someone was documented or undocumented,” she said.
Her bill was created as a preemptive measure to ensure refugees are protected in California even if the legislature were to change in the future.
UC Davis Professor of Law Raquel Aldana said that the new law is important because it confirms that California welcomes all refugees.
“What President Trump decided to do through executive order is unprecedented,” Aldana said. “He is empowering states to decline to admit refugees under some argument that imposing this obligation upon them would violate state sovereignty.”
California has been accepting refugees for decades and benefits from economic and cultural contributions from refugees who hold $ 17 billion in spending power in the state, according to the bill. The Sacramento region is home to thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan, among other countries, according to the Refugee Processing Center.
The California Public Defenders Association was one of the bill’s supporters. Graciela Martinez, chair of the Immigration Committee for the CPDA, believes that the bill was preemptive and symbolic because it didn’t appear to be necessary in California where cities tend to welcome refugees.
“It’s about honoring people’s humanity, which is something that this administration has tried to prevent at every step of the way when it comes to anybody who’s not American born,” Martinez said.
However, Martinez said it is always beneficial to have clear guidelines and standards that allow for refugees to reside in California without having to go through any other bureaucratic process.
“That can’t be the standard,” she said in regards to the Trump Administration’s executive order. “There shouldn’t be such an exclusion for refugees in this country notwithstanding that they are here lawfully under federal immigration law.”