Originally Posted by
eaglenow
Like I said, my intention is not to shame anyone. It was just general observation. Since you responded, I replied to you. Like I said, I do believe that you have no bad intentions and you are reasonable as demonstrated by the fact that you did not simply delete my posts and be done with it.
I am sure I can reason with you and sure will reach out to you for a longer discussion about advocacy and we can share perspectives.
IV stand with Sen. Durbin is not to shame him or harass him. They are just calling him out. If you look in the past, they have never done this, even to Sen. Grassley, Sen. Sessions and numerous other blocks and setbacks. But calling out Sen. Durbin is a necessity felt by IV leaders at this time.
Sen. Durbin is not being reasonable and is not ready to negotiate in good faith. He mocks Indians waiting in these perennial backlog line, blocks the most reasonable and possibly the only immigration bill that can pass outside of CIR, refuses to add aging out kids to his dream act, and on top of it comes out with a bill that has absolutely no chance of passing. And brings it to the floor for UC, a process he says is not right for the most agreed upon bipartisan bill. And this is for a bill he had cosponsored. The only difference being at that time, it had Irish relief provisions. He is literally mocking the entire community.
His Relief act is only to show that he is pro immigrant. This is how bills are killed. Look up the history of how bills are killed, especially common sense ones. It invariably involves the lawmaker agreeing with the bill in principle and they add a poison pill, that seems reasonable to outside world but in essence and reality is only designed to kill the bill.
His mother was an immigrant does not matter as his intentions are what matters. Now I did not personally witness this and saw it in a post on the IV main channel. So take it with a grain of salt. He apparently told one of the members in the cafeteria that Indians need to stop cheating and abuse. Now if that is not stereotyping, I am not sure what is.
And regardless of whether we think he is a racist or not, his actions speak louder than words. His position is let Indians keep waiting till more GCs can be allocated. He simply does not care that people are in backlogs for more than a decade and effectively any Indian filing for GC now will never get GC unless laws change. But he is acting concerned that future applicants not in the system yet will be impacted. So Indians are sub humans who are meant to be discriminated and others must not have any wait times?
And he has the audacity to say this will benefit only Indians at the expense of other communities. It is really the other way around. Today row is benefiting at the expense of backlogged Indians.
The core issue is that lack of GC numbers results in backlog. The compositiOn of backlog is proof of discrimination due to country of birth. This bill aims to remove discrimination and not fix backlogs.
He says the discrimination can be removed only if backlogs are removed at the same time. Why are the two linked? After passing the bill to fix discrimination, we can work on fixing backlogs. They are not related and need not be passed together nor are they mutually exclusive.
He is fine with Indians waiting for a decade now with people from 2015 never getting GC, but he is worried that future applicants will have to wait 8 to 10 years to get GC? And if this does not show his intent what will?
He is simply playing politics with the lives of people born in India. And his actions betray his thoughts.
We just need to make calls and share our stories and request him to remove his hold. The only thing our community can do at this time is to keep the calls going and show that we will not give up. Again, his acting in bad faith is very evident as noted by the tweet from Rep.Lofgren and the statement from Sen. warner on the floor. We need to stand together at this time and show that we will not fall for tricks like increasing GC etc. He has no logical reason to hold this bill.
If he thinks increasing GC will be quick, he should have no trouble passing the current bill and then passing the GC increase. If he knows increasing GC is not easy, why is he holding this bill and promoting his relief act instead. In either case there is no reason to block this bill. And that is what we need to keep calling about and sharing how we are impacted. All of us should be calling him to discuss the impact of current system and ask him to remove his hold. If we keep doing that, given the pressure from other sides, he will relent, maybe by asking for minor changes to existing bill or passing the bill as is. We do not have any other choice as nothing else will pass outside of CIR.
And even President Obama with his huge political capital and having won the house and senate did not touch CIR. And the partisan politics has only gotten worse. This is a rare bill that has huge bipartisan support that is being blocked by only one senator for no logical reason.