Connie Mack: “Fresh from summer recess, Congress returns this week to tackle substantive issues anew. One that it needs to address is…”

“Fresh from summer recess, Congress returns this week to tackle substantive issues anew. One that it needs to address is the plight of longtime immigrants who unjustly face deportation because of an unfair, un-American law. Enacted by the same Congress that brought you anti-immigrant welfare reform, a new 1996 immigration law denies the chance to gain legal status to hundreds of thousands of Central Americans and others who have lived peaceably in the United States for years. Some of the new law is so shameful that Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, in a class-action suit in Miami, has ruled that it violates the due-process rights of some 40,000 Nicaraguans with more than seven years in this country. After Judge King forbade the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport these class members, Attorney General Janet Reno commendably extended the same protections nationwide to cover an estimated 150,000 Savadorans and 80,000 Guatemalans as well. These people also fled U.S. supported civil wars in their homelands during the 1980s. Many have been issued work permits repeatedly and have established families and businesses.”