Religious, Human Rights Groups' First Nat'l Immigration Score Card

As refugees risk their lives attempting to reach the United States for safe haven, and immigration reform legislation is at the feet of House Republicans, national religious and human rights groups released a first ever national score card Monday. It shows the grades that members of the House of Representatives have made on their immigration voting record in the 113th Congress.

“Outside the hallways of the Capitol, the immigration reform debate isn’t political. It’s personal,” reports ABC News on Monday. “When Washington, D.C. resident Cindy Monge saw the images of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border it hit home. Eight years ago she was one of them.”

In 2006, at age 11, Monge left Guatemala, desperately needing to be with a father she’d never met and a mother who’d spent six years traveling back and forth on a tourist visa.

“I only had one option, which was to cross the border,” she says. “I wanted to be with my parents.”

ABC News reports:

Alone at age 11, she traveled from bus to bus, contact to contact as she made the harrowing journey from Guatemala to the Mexico-U.S. border. For eight days she lived off peppermint candies and water, hiding in luggage compartments to evade Mexican authorities.

 

At the U.S. gates, clutching a false birth certificate provided by smugglers, her plan derailed.

 

“They took me to the back, they did my fingerprints, they found out everything,” Monge says, recalling her journey in an interview with ABC News. “I felt like it was the end for me.”

 

She would spend the next month in a juvenile detention center without an immigration hearing, praying that her undocumented father would risk his own security to claim her.

 

“I was alone in my thoughts and in my mind about what was going to happen next,” she says. “What was going to happen with my parents? Would they even know about me? Would they find out what was going on?”

Monge, now 19, shares her story with the 57,000 minors who’ve flooded through the U.S. southern border in the past nine months, a 106 percent increase since last year.

 
Congress is divided on what to do, many of its members choosing to not look at or address root causes and to not honor human rights of refugees.

“The 2014 National Immigration Score Card leaves no doubt who supported immigration reform and who worked against us,” national organizations representing religious groups, civil and human rights groups, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander and immigrant communitiesin said in a statement Monday

There but for the grace of God go I

Immigration reform is supported by the majorities of every religious group – except white evangelical protestants. Many Americans, however,  still fail to understand that the immigrantion/refugee crisis has reached an all-time high level in the U.S. due to violent U.S. foreign policies. Even fewer place the blame on the right people, people like Hillary Clinton, former George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. They have not yet seen the School of the America’s as a root cause of violence in places like Honduras where ost refugees are fleeing to come to the U.S.

More: Hillary Clinton’s Gun-Drugs-Border Crisis Scandal

On the other hand, more and more Americans are looking at the root causes of the immigration/refugee crisis and are understanding the human right factor, thus supporting real immigration reform.

“The American people support immigration reform and they will join us in sending a clear and unmistakable signal to Washington: Congress’ inaction fuels our action. The time is now for our communities to get engaged.”

The first 2014 National Immigration Score Card shows that members of Colorado’s delegation received the following scores based on their immigration votes and bill sponsorship:

• DeGette, Diana          91%
• Polis, Jared               100%
• Tipton, Scott              0%
• Gardner, Cory            0%
• Lamborn, Doug         0%
• Coffman, Mike           9%
• Perlmutter, Ed           91%

This weekend, Rep. Cory Gardner (R, CD-4) reinforced his anti-immigrant stance by criticizing the broadly popular and bipartisan Senate immigration bill. He claimed his approach instead would be to “move forward with an immigration policy that prioritizes border security, and that includes a viable guest-worker program.”

Interesting. Maybe he didn’t know the Senate bill already includes a worker program endorsed by both the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO?

Or that it increases funding for border security by $50 billion and would create 20,000 new border agents and 700 miles of additional border fencing?
 
 

The immigrant community is tired of politicians like Rep. Gardner who say they’re pushing “immigration reform,” but they’re voting records tell a very different story.

 
“After the 2012 election, Congress pledged to act on immigration reform. Two years later, Congress has refused to bring a broad bill to the floor and called for anti-immigration votes by doing things like ending the DACA program and deporting DREAMers,” said said Carla Castedo Mi Familia Vota Colorado State Director.

“The Score Cards clearly show who supported immigration reform and who worked against it or failed to get a vote on the House floor. Congress may try to ignore the community, but the community will not ignore them,”  Castedo stated.
 
 

“Congressmen Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner do not represent family values.  They have actively separated children from their parents and kept families in the shadows by refusing to take action to pass immigration reform,” said Polly Baca, first Hispanic woman elected to the Colorado State Senate. “Coffman and Gardner only represent their own personal interests and the interests of the anti-immigrant Tea Party.”

The best of the Colorado Republicans got a 9 percent rating on the immigration score card.

“You would think we lived in Alabama,” said Patty Kupfer, Managing Director of America’s Voice based in Colorado. “I’m tired of saying these Republicans are ‘out of touch’ with voters in Colorado.

“They know they’re on the wrong side of this issue, but they think they’ve got one more election before they really have to worry about a backlash from voters who care about immigration. We’ll see about that.”