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From the NYCLU:
We need you to take action today!
Click here to send a fax TODAY to your Suffolk County lawmakers to ask them to oppose this unprecedented legislation!
Then mark your calendar and attend a public hearing on the bill this Tuesday, Sept. 5th at 9:00 am, at the Williams H. Rogers Building at the Suffolk County Legislature, 725 Veterans Memorial Highway, Smithtown.
At the last public hearing, the anti-immigrant extremists were out in full force. We cannot let the radical few represent the rational majority.
All levels of government must work to uphold the United States Constitution, not serve to dismantle it. Please join us at the hearing on Sept. 5th in opposition to I.R. 2025. We can make a difference!
From LIIA:
Please join us this Tuesday morning, September 5 at 8:00 am for a morning of prayer, song and silence in solidarity with a community that needs healing and compassion. Please plan on speaking out to this frightened and cowered legislature against this proposed law. Bring a prepared 3 minute statement to present at the legislative hearing.
All participants are asked to not engage counter-protestors or police. This Interfaith Prayer vigil is about solidarity for a community under attack. On this Labor Day Weekend let’s remember that immigrants are workers too!
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
1) Join us in Hauppauge (Exit 56) at the Suffolk Co. legislature for the event.
2) Contribute money to the effort. Make your donation to the LI Immigrant Alliance AND notify us of your generous support by e-mailing us at immigrantalliance@yahoo.com
3) If you cannot attend, encourage your pastor, rabbi or imam to offer prayers of solidarity for the Suffolk County immigrant and worker community, including the work of the LI Immigrant Alliance..
Deuteronomy 24:14 “We must not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether the worker is a resident or immigrant living in your town. We must pay the worker wages promptly because the worker is poor and counting on it.”Immigration is a deeply relevant issue for both Americans and the faith community. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants, one that has been continually reshaped by new groups of people bringing diverse cultures, perspectives, and resources. Immigration is also a core issue for the fairth community that reveres the Bible: the biblical story continually shows God’s concern for the migrant and the outcast. The early Hebrews were “strangers in the land of Egypt ” and were asked to remember this heritage by protecting the strangers among them in the promised land. Similarly, throughout the New Testament, Christians are called to care for the outcast and the stranger. (from Sojourners)
Despite this call to higher acts, many immigrants find themselves under attack. In early August, the Suffolk Co Executive proposed the legislature pass the most draconian anti-immigrant law seen in New York State since 1920. The law will force businesses with County contracts to fire suspected ‘illegal’ immigrants. Suffolk County has decided to enforce its own national immigration policy rather than leaving it to the Federal government. It is a pattern we have unfortunately seen exhibited by our County Executive previously.
Malachi 3:5 So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty
County Executive Steve Levy, has lashed out against Latinos due to what he cites as a rise in crime. In fact, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that despite the influx of more than 200,000 immigrants in the last decade, crime has actually fallen. The rate of criminality among immigrants is only slightly more than the rate in the U.S. Congress. Since the immigrant workers have arrived, Suffolk has seen the declining economy rebound since 1993 and housing values have more than doubled! He has repeated the untruth that immigrants are bankrupting our hospitals, even though he knows full well that 65 million American citizens are without any health coverage during some time in the last 12 months. For the middle class and poor health deliveryt has been catastrophically dismal for decades. It is not immigrants that have exposed a health system on the brink of collaspe. It is not immigrants that cause an estimated 18,000 deaths per year, because these people are without the resources to pay for medicines and necessary care. Yet the immigrant has become the easy scapegoat of ambitious, but often unscroupulous politicians
Despite the demonstrable and magnificant value that these working people have brought to our community, Levy’ s law has brought out the worst in a segment of the county’s population. The Minutemen have disrupted public and private meetings refusing to reduce their bullying agressive tactics to intididate our neighbors into silence.
Deuteronomy 10:17-19 For the Lord our God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no plurality and accepts no bribes. God defends the cause of the orphan and the widow, and loves the immigrant, giving the immigrant food and clothing. And we are to love those who are immigrants, for God?s people were immigrants in Egypt
Luis Valenzuela, Executive Director
Long Island Immigrant Alliance
143 Schleigel Blvd.,
Amityville, NY 11701
631 789-0720
immigrantalliance@yahoo.com
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, cynthia mckinney, Long Island Music, Long Island Politics, social & economic justice Tagged: | book of the month, Uncategorized
Suffolk County has evey reson to try and regulate immigration law, because that job is not being done by the federal government, and it is the job of every local county government.
The Levey bill to enforce immigration law.
I am very worried that if this bill does not pass my neighbors, co-workers and friends will will be displaced by foreign people. My county government should protect us from foreigners and illegal residents.
Please vote FOR this bill. Suffolk County has the obligation to start enforcing federal immigration law.