Dee Halczak of Solidarity Lowell penned a letter in support of the Safe Communities Act and the Work and Family Mobility Act in the Lowell Sun:
There are people in our communities, friends and family and neighbors, who have been here for years providing needed services and stability to our communities. But because they arrived here, the way desperate people do, without dotting all the i’s, under current policies we’re supposed to forget those relationships and the good they’ve done and deport them to places many of them don’t even remember and where they have no connections to help them survive.
It is time someone did the humanitarian thing and found a way to help them stay here and thrive, instead of kicking them out of the only country many of them really know.
One state can’t change federal immigration policy, but it can protect its residents from excessive zeal in the enforcement of unjust rules and regulations.
Massachusetts legislators can lead the way by passing the Safe Communities Act, which allows our police to focus on the jobs we hired them for, and the Work and Family Mobility Act, which allows people to obtain a drivers license so that they can support themselves and their family without providing information on immigration status.
We’ve been arguing over this issue for half of my lifetime. It’s time to stop arguing and do the humane thing. People are already here. Pass the legislation that will let us all go on with our lives and focus on more important things, like standing together to help this country overcome one of the worst crises it has ever encountered.
