CANCELLATION & LIFE AFTER WINNING: The CLAW Campaign Kicks Off
Delivered by Paul Wickham Schmidt
CLAW Headquarters, Reston, Virginia
February 27, 2022
Thank you for inviting me this afternoon. I’m honored to be here. Beyond that, I wish to congratulate and thank Neela Nesari and the rest of you for your courage, dedication, and humanity in standing up and speaking out for social justice in America.
Of course, I will start out by giving you my “standard comprehensive disclaimer.” What I’m about to tell you represents solely my views and not the views or opinions of any individual, institution, organization, or group with which I am associated, have been associated in the past, or might associate with in the future!
My time on the stage is winding down. But yours, my friends, is just beginning. You are the ones who control your destinies and must decide what kind of world you want to live in and what you want to leave behind for the next generations.
Relief for families granted cancellation of removal is a “just cause” that should be a “no-brainer” in a fair, well-functioning, human-values-based society. That neither such badly-needed specific remedial changes nor long overdue “big picture” reforms to fix our broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts, restore fairness and functionality to our shattered refugee and asylum programs, and make our legal immigration system robust, realistic, workable, and serving the national interest says something about our current national mood and our political leadership that should be quite concerning to you as the upcoming generation!
My friends, both our Immigration Courts and our democratic republic are in a grave existential crisis. There are powerful and well-organized forces with a very dark, exclusive, intolerant, sometimes belligerent vision of America’s future: one that reverses generations of human progress and knowledge and actively promotes intolerance, misinformation, dehumanization, and deconstruction of our democratic institutions and fundamental human values.
They actively promote an intentionally “whitewashed” version of American history: One that denies the ingenuity, creativity, and forced labor of generations of African Americans who literally built our country! It disregards the courage, tenacity, skill, and strength of Asian Americans who built our Transcontinental Railroad and literally brought our nation together. And, of course, it dismisses the legions of Hispanic Americans who have been “making America great” since before “America was America,” with their culture, hard work, determination, and commitment to the “real” American dream, not the “whitewashed” version. It basically devalues the essential contributions of almost all non-Western-European immigrants!
The future envisioned by these dark forces “x’es out” many, probably the majority, of you in this room. It says that their so-called individual rights to do as they please outweigh the common interests of society and humanity as a whole. Yet, few seem willing to challenge them and stand up for the rights and human dignity of “the others” which are being demeaned, devalued, and, in some cases, erased. Don’t let their darkness, willful ignorance, and often threatening demeanor be your future and that of generations to come.
Look around you here at the real history and the real America represented by this audience. The future is yours! Don’t let the forces of darkness and a “past that never was” deny your destiny!
Now is the time to take a stand for Due Process, fundamental fairness, human rights, human dignity, social justice, and human decency! Become the “next generation leaders” of the New Due Process Army and fight to make equal justice under law and the constitutional and human rights of everyone a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise! Due process forever!
Thanks again for inviting me and for listening.
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It was great to see in the audience some of the former students from my last “pre-pandemic in-person speech” to Professor Dree Collopy’s class at Washington College of Law at American University there as lawyers in the ranks of the NDPA!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
02-28-22