June, 27 2011, 03:46pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Michael Earls (202) 261-2388
Senate Judiciary Committee Holds First-Ever Hearing on the DREAM Act
WASHINGTON
Tomorrow, Assistant Senate Majority Leader U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) will chair the first-ever U.S. Senate hearing on the DREAM Act before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security. The DREAM Act, first introduced in 2001 by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), is a common sense proposal that offers talented young people who came to the United States as minors a chance to earn legal status and a path to citizenship - if they meet a set of stringent criteria and attend college or enroll in the U.S. military. In the 111th Congress, the DREAM Act fell just five votes short of becoming law, having passed the House with bipartisan support and winning 55 votes in the Senate. In the 112th Congress, the DREAM Act has been introduced by a bi-partisan group of Representatives in the House and by Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
The DREAM Act has been introduced on a bipartisan basis for ten years and has consistently enjoyed overwhelming public support. The bill is favored by nearly 70 percent of voters, according to a poll conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for First Focus in June 2010. A November 2010 poll from Lake Research Partners showed similarly high levels of support. Not surprisingly, the issue is particularly salient with Latino voters. According to a June 2011 poll of Latino voters by Latino Decisions and impreMedia immigration reform/DREAM Act comes in as their number one priority - ahead of economy/jobs. The DREAM Act has been championed by religious, business, education and civil rights leaders, as well as military leaders and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who recognize the benefits of recruiting talented young people who are eager to serve.
Although Republicans in the Senate led a filibuster last year that blocked the DREAM Act from becoming law, advocates and supporters are hopeful that enough Republicans will soon recognize the contributions and talents of this group of young people, and give them the opportunity to earn legal status in the only country they know as home.
Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America's Voice Education Fund, said, "Millions of Latinos watched on live television last year as all but three Republican Senators voted against the Hispanic community's best and brightest young people, further eroding their already dismal standing with this growing group of voters. The DREAM Act was once championed by Congressional Republicans but you would hardly know it today. With this hearing, Senator Durbin and his Democratic colleagues are once again laying out the many compelling reasons to support DREAM and presenting Republicans with yet another opportunity to come to their senses. We sincerely hope enough of the 12 Republicans currently serving in the Senate who have voted for some version of the DREAM Act in the past come home and join with Democrats to make the DREAM Act a reality this year."
LATEST NEWS
'Every Year It Is More Relevant': Palestinians Mark Land Day Amid Genocide
"We honor those who rose up in 1976 and all who have risen up to fight for justice in Palestine," said one advocacy group.
Mar 30, 2024
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
Palestinians on Saturday were joined by people across the globe in marking Land Day, the 48th anniversary of Israel's killing of six unarmed protesters who rose up against the Israeli government's confiscation and occupation of Palestinian land.
Thousands of Palestinian people marched through Deir Hanna, one of the Israeli towns where authorities violently cracked down on nonviolent protesters on March 30, 1976, as they honored Raja Abu Raya, Khader Khalayleh, Khadija Shawahneh, Kheir Yassin, Mohsin Taha, and Raafat Zuhairi.
More than 100 people were also injured by Israeli authorities during the protest in 1976, which was organized in opposition to Israel's confiscation of nearly 5,000 acres of land that belonged to Palestinian citizens of Israel in the northern Galilee region.
The Good Shepherd Collective, an anti-Zionist human rights group based in the West Bank, said that with Israel bombarding Gaza and conducting raids almost daily in the West Bank as officials seize more land, Land Day becomes "more relevant" every year.
"No Palestinian needs to be reminded of the centrality of the land in the struggle for justice and liberation. Land Day is more a remembrance of one massacre among hundreds over more than one hundred years of Zionist violence," said Good Shepherd Collective. "In the midst of a genocide, we must continue to speak out and speak of the context of settler-colonialism's baked-in logic of elimination."
Last week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrichannounced Israel was seizing nearly 2,000 acres of land in the occupied West Bank, which would allow the country to build more illegal settlements. The country's settlement-planning authority said earlier this month it had approved the construction of 3,500 new housing units in the territory.
As the Middle East Eyereported, Israeli forces conducted overnight raids across the West Bank ahead of Land Day, killing a 13-year-old boy named Nabil Abu Abed near Jenin.
The U.S.-based Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) marked Land Day as organizers with the group held solidarity marches and rallies in cities including Boston; Portland, Maine; and Providence, Rhode Island. Other groups organized a march scheduled for Saturday evening in New York City.
The group noted that Land Day also marks the beginning of the Great March of Return protests, which were held weekly for 21 months starting on March 30, 2018 as demonstrators demanded an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza and the right to return to the homes their families were expelled from in 1948 when Zionist forces cleared the way to establish Israel. More than 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces for participating in the marches, including 46 children.
"We mourn the thousands whom the Israeli military murdered or permanently injured over the years. We honor those who rose up in 1976 and all who have risen up to fight for justice in Palestine," said JVP.
Marches also took place in Cardiff, Wales; London; Madrid; and Helsingborg, Sweden, with protesters reiterating the demand for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
"I'll keep [marching] as long as the bombing and the apartheid and the injustice is going on," Stephen Kapos, an 86-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, told Al Jazeera.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In GOP's Latest 'Clear Call to Genocide,' Lawmaker Calls for Nuclear Bombing of Gaza
"To so casually call for what would result in the killing of every human being in Gaza sends the chilling message that Palestinian lives have no value," said one Palestinian rights advocate.
Mar 30, 2024
U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg became the latest Republican lawmaker to openly call for the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza, saying at a town hall that instead of sending humanitarian aid to starving civilians there, the U.S. should "get it over quick" by dropping a nuclear bomb on the besieged enclave.
The Michigan Republican was asked by a voter why taxpayer money was being spent to build a port off the coast of Gaza at an event in the town of Dundee, in a video that was apparently recorded on March 25 and posted to social media on Saturday.
"We shouldn't be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima," said Walberg, referring to the two Japanese cities where the U.S. detonated two atomic bombs in 1945, killing an estimated 214,000 people and leaving survivors with the effects of radiation, including chronic and deadly diseases.
Walberg's comments were made public a day after it was reported that the Biden administration had approved the transfer of new weapons to the Israel Defense Forces, including 2,000-pound bombs like those that have already made Israel's bombardment one of the deadliest and most destructive in modern history.
The White House has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where at least 31 people—including 27 children—have already died of starvation as a result of Israel's near-total blockade on aid since October. Parts of northern Gaza are now experiencing famine, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative (IPC), after months of warnings from experts that a man-made famine would eventually take hold unless humanitarian aid increased significantly.
The Israel Defense Forces' U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave has killed at least 32,705 Palestinians so far.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Walberg's "clear call to genocide... should be condemned by all Americans who value human life and international law."
"To so casually call for what would result in the killing of every human being in Gaza sends the chilling message that Palestinian lives have no value," said Walid. "It is this dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in the ongoing slaughter and suffering we see every day in Gaza and the West Bank."
Mitchell Rivard, chief of staff to Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), said Walberg's comments illustrate "the Republican position on Gaza."
Earlier this month, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) told a group of Palestinian rights advocates, "Goodbye to Palestine"—leading Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) to say he had called "for the genocide of the Palestinian people."
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) in February told an activist, "I think we should kill 'em all," when asked about Palestinian children who have been killed by Israel with U.S. military support, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called for Israel to "level the place" soon after the war started.
Keep ReadingShow Less
WHO Chief Demands Swift Medical Evacuations for 9,000 Injured, Sick Patients in Gaza
Israel is currently attempting to send several patients back to the besieged enclave from East Jerusalem, where they have been receiving cancer treatment.
Mar 30, 2024
The head of the World Health Organization on Saturday demanded that Israel speed up approvals for medical evacuations from Gaza as the number of people who urgently need life-saving healthcare reached roughly 9,000—and as Israeli officials threatened to send several Palestinian patients back to the besieged enclave from the East Jerusalem hospital where they've received cancer treatment.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, warned that with only 10 of Gaza's 36 hospitals "minimally functional" following repeated attacks on the enclave's healthcare system, "thousands of patients continue to be deprived of healthcare."
At the beginning of March, WHO assessed that about 8,000 patients needed to be immediately evacuated from Gaza to receive treatment for cancer, kidney failure, and other chronic diseases as well as injuries from Israel's relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure.
That number has grown by about 1,000 in recent weeks, Tedros said.
More than 3,400 sick and injured people have been taken abroad via the southern border town of Rafah since Israel began its bombardment on October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"But many more need to be evacuated," said Tedros. "We urge Israel to speed up approvals for evacuations, so that critical patients can be treated. Every moment matters."
As Tedros called on Israel to swiftly approve medical evacuations, human rights advocates condemned Israeli authorities who aim to deport patients with cancer back to Gaza from an East Jerusalem hospital where they've been receiving advanced treatment since before the October 7 attack on southern Israel.
"Returning residents to Gaza during a military conflict and a humanitarian crisis is against international law and poses a deliberate risk to innocent lives," Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in a statement. "All the more so when it concerns patients who may face a death sentence due to unsanitary conditions and hunger, along with the unlikely availability of medical care."
At least 22 patients from Gaza, including several children, have been receiving treatment at Augusta Victoria Hospital, having received authorization from Israel prior to the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) current escalation.
"I arrived here in Jerusalem with my son Hamza on September 27 last year," Qamar Abu Zoar toldThe Guardian on Saturday. "Hamza, who is four and a half years old, has a brain tumor and needs treatment that he couldn't receive in Gaza. While we were here, the war broke out. And since then, we have been stranded in this hospital, while my other two younger children are in the north of Gaza with my husband."
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, has urged hospital officials to provide a list of patients who could be sent back to Gaza, where patients in the remaining hospitals are suffering from infections due to the use of improvised and unsterilized medical equipment, as well as from worsening malnutrition.
Israel's near-total blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza has affected food and medicines, and CNN reported earlier this month that anesthetics, anesthesia machines, oxygen tanks, and ventilators are frequently rejected by Israeli inspectors who examine aid trucks.
Last week, the Israeli High Court of Justice halted an effort by COGAT to send 10 patients from Augusta Victoria Hospital back to Gaza, where in many cases their homes and hometowns have been decimated by Israeli bombing and shelling.
COGAT claimed the patients had finished their treatment and said it would work with aid agencies if they had a need for more medical care, coordinating "their stay with the hospitals to safeguard their health."
But as Tedros warned Saturday, the vast majority of hospitals in Gaza are no longer operating.
Israel's High Court has until April 21 to issue a final ruling on whether officials can deport patients to Gaza.
"The hospitals and the medical staff must strongly oppose the release of the patients from their custody," said PHR, "unless a guarantee is given that they will not be returned to Gaza where their lives are in danger."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular