Immigrants and Refugees

Thumbs Down! Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries Unrecognized

In the 1940s nearly one million Jews lived in Arab countries and Iran. Today, only 5,000 remain. HR 848 and SR 494 would require recognizing that multiple refugee populations, including more than 850,000 Jews uprooted from Arab countries, were created in the Middle East and that their rights and losses must be addressed. Send a "Recognizing Forgotten Jewish Refugees" letter, before March 23, 2008, urging support of the House resolution. Support the plight of Jewish refugees.

Thumbs Up! The Forgotten People Fund (FPF) for Ethiopian Olim

The Ziv Tzedakah Fund, founded by Danny Siegel, is a non-profit organization dedicated to funding little known Tzedakah projects, including the Forgotten People Fund. FPF volunteers help Ethiopian immigrant families in Israel who live below the poverty line to realize their full potential and to receive direct services such as counseling and tutoring, food vouchers, and household items. Don’t forget the forgotten people!

The Plight of Illegal Immigrants: Still Up in the Air

Jewish Groups Welcome Immigration Reform Plan, With Reservations

“What is hateful unto you do not do unto your neighbor. The rest is commentary—now go and study.” (Shabbat 31a) Hillel

Although the immigration reform package continues to be debated and its outcome is unknown, Jewish groups have weighed on in the subject. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the nation’s oldest international migration and refugee resettlement agency, said President Bush’s compromise immigration reform package “represents a step in the right direction” for creating a path to citizenship for most of the 12 million illegal immigrants. But Gideon Aronoff, HIAS president, has his concerns. Read what he has to say on immigration from a Jewish point of view in the Forward and in Sh’ma.

Jewish Funds for Justice applauded the proposed legislation but is “deeply concerned” over provisions that “value economic needs over human concerns,” while the Anti-Defamation League reacted more favorably, noting the bi-partisan proposal advances the cause of “keeping our nation both welcoming and secure.” What do you think? Let us know at SocialAction.com.

The Plight of Jewish Immigrants from Arab Countries

“Jews in Arab countries were compelled to leave their homes because of circumstances that included terror and government edicts.”—Gary Ackerman (D-NY), May 8, 2007, Congressional Hearing on Capitol Hill

“I am a refugee from the Middle East, but I am not a Palestinian, I am a Jew,” explained Joseph Abdel Wahed, who was forced to leave Egypt in 1956. According to JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, a grassroots group that seeks rights and redress for Jews from Arab countries), in 1948 nearly 900,000 Jews indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa lived in what are now known as the “Arab States.” Today, 99% of these indigenous Jewish communities no longer exist. Arab governments forced them to leave, confiscated their personal and communal property, and stripped them of their citizenships. Yet we rarely hear about the plight of this group of immigrants. For Action Alerts on the international Campaign for Rights and Redress for Jews displaced from Arab Countries, contact JJAC.

I, Too, Am an Immigrant

By STEVEN S. FOLDES

Reprinted with permission from Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility March 2007 (www.shma.com).

For provocative and varied Jewish viewpoints on immigrant reform, read the March-April 2007 issue of Sh’ma, which includes moving personal narratives of immigrants and the voices of policy advocates from across the nation. In “I, Too, Am an Immigrant,” Steven S. Foldes suggests that social justice committees must reach out to immigrant communities and their religious institutions. “We must listen to immigrants,” says Foldes, “and build alliances with them.”

The Immigrants’ “Passover” in America

By RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW

Through the spring of 2006, “Passover” has been happening in the streets of America. Two million people went into the streets against a Congressional Pharaoh (the House of Representatives) that was saying “Let us make it a criminal act, a felony to be punished with prison at ‘hard labor,’ to live in the United States without a document. Let us make it a felony to feed or heal or educate or comfort these criminals.”

Action Alert on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) urges support for efforts to resolve the complex problems associated with undocumented migration, a process known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR).

Groups in Israel Score Legal Victory for Foreign Workers

The Hotline for Migrant Workers in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), two grantees of the New Israel Fund, helped a foreign worker in Israel score a legal victory when Israel ‘s Supreme Court ordered the government to formulate new arrangements for foreign workers.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)

As the oldest international migration and refugee resettlement agency in the U.S., HIAS also played a major role in the rescue and relocation of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and of Jews from Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt and the communist countries of Eastern Europe. More recently, since the mid-70s, HIAS has helped more than 300,000 Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union and its successor states escape persecution and rebuild new lives in the United States. As the migration arm of the organized American Jewish community, HIAS also advocates on behalf of refugees and migrants on the international, national and community level.

Immigrant Justice Haggadah

Produced by the JEWISH COUNCIL ON URBAN AFFAIRS

We hope that this Passover Seder has helped to illuminate our collective path towards justice. What will your next step be to take us further down that road?

Jewish Values and Immigrants and Refugees

From RELIGIOUS ACTION CENTER

“There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you” (Exodus 12:49). The Torah articulates a basic principle to which the Jewish people clung through two millennia of Diaspora and disenfranchisement: “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). This principle of equal rights for citizens and non-citizens alike permeates not only Jewish tradition, but the American legal tradition as well. As citizens fully integrated into the fabric of this country, we have a unique responsibility as inheritors of an immigrant history to ensure that the rights of non-citizens are not trampled upon today. Likewise, Jews have a traditional appreciation for, and interest in, maintaining the civil liberties that have allowed us to thrive in this country. The great strength of the American system of governance is that it provides its inhabitants with inalienable individual rights, including the right to due process, the right to be punished in proportion to the crime committed, the right not to be imprisoned without cause. These modern political rights derive at least part of their power from an ancient moral charge: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). This biblical directive teaches us that we must act justly in the pursuit of justice; that we must insist on both just ends and just means. As important in Judaism as protecting rights is protecting life. As the Torah states, “I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30). We have a right to ensure our safety and that of our loved ones, to defend ourselves against terrorism. Today, that may require recalibrating the balance between civil liberties and national security.

Jewish Council for Public Affairs

The JCPA supports an equitable immigration policy that protects the human rights of all newcomers and the civil liberties of every U.S. resident; generous levels of refugee admissions and full funding for refugee slots, including those for Jews from the former Soviet Union; a further extension of the Lautenberg Amendment. We support full restoration of public benefits and civil liberties protections for legal immigrants, refugees and asylees. This includes initiatives to expand eligibility for SSI, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for legal immigrants who entered the country after the welfare law’s enactment and the restoration of due process protections undermined by current law for legal immigrants and asylum-seekers, particularly with regard to expedited removal. (Agenda 2000-2001)

The JCPA supports an open, fair and timely naturalization process that reduces the application backlog without impeding access to those legitimately seeking to naturalize, or further restricting eligibility for citizenship (Agenda 1999-2000). While we support proposals to separate INS service and enforcement functions to improve accountability and clarity of mission, there must be strong leadership and coordination of the two functions to ensure consistent, unified immigration policy (Agenda 2000-2001).

The JCPA opposes “English-Only” initiatives, which can deny foreign-born citizens equal access to the rights of all citizens. We support increased availability of “English-as-a-second-language” and other training programs to help immigrants and refugees move into mainstream American life (JPP 1990-1991).

The JCPA supports immigration policy that retains family reunification as its basis and provides additional immigration slots for special skills (JPP 1991-1992). We support an open admissions policy that maintains the pluralistic character of American society and does not prefer one national group at the expense of another; we oppose the use of rigid caps on entry to the U.S. (JPP 1990-1991). While the JCPA supports humane measures to control illegal immigration, we oppose a national identification card system as violating privacy rights and civil liberties (JPP 1995-1996). We oppose use of employer sanctions to prevent employment of undocumented workers, believing it fosters discrimination against minorities whom employers may regard as “foreign” (JPP 1992-1993). The JCPA supports efforts to update a provision of immigration law known as “registry”, which provides for administrative adjustment of immigrant status, by moving the eligibility cut-off date from 1972 to 1986, allowing immigrants who entered the U.S. prior to January 1, 1986 to become lawful permanent residents; we favor also proposals that would, over time, advance the cut-off date further, to 1990 by the year 2006 (Resolution adopted in June 2000).