Rights Group: Senate Harmful To Poor, Immigrants
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators are pushing the idea of stripping the 14th Amendment, voted to slash funding for food stamps and hurriedly wasted $600 million to solve a fabricated crisis. The following is a statement from Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change :
"The Senate, this week, showed an alarming disregard and callousness toward some of our most vulnerable communities. Instead of working to better our nation, the Senate took affirmative steps to divide. Instead of promoting community and family, the Senate's actions threaten to break up and destroy poor and immigrant families.
"It is grotesque that this Senate is pitting needy communities against each other in the name of fiscal responsibility, but will call for extending tax cuts for the very rich that this country cannot afford. Helping the unemployed and adequately funding our schools should not come at the expense of people who desperately need help to feed their families.
"And while they couldn't find money to help needy families, they were able to squander $600 million to secure a border that has never been safer and has never been more highly funded.
"It is also abhorrent that respected elected officials could seriously consider doing away with such a core tenet as the one enshrined by the 14th Amendment that protects our citizenship against political whims. The Republican senators mulling this travesty know full well it will never happen, but push it none the less because they think the racial acrimony it creates helps them politically.
"The Senate needs to reverse course immediately, and start delivering effective policies to move our country forward. Immigration reform should be at the top of their list."
Since 1968, the Center for Community Change has strengthened the leadership, voice and power of low-income communities nationwide to confront the vital issues of today and build the social movements of tomorrow.
