Tag: VOICE

DHS Rolls Out VOICE Program To Mixed Reviews!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/trump-administration-launches-effort-to-help-crime-victims-whose-assailants-are-here-illegally/2017/04/26/70b27f1c-2a29-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.53e57f278b40

Maria Sacchetti writes in the Washington Post:

“Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly on Wednesday unveiled a new effort to aid victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, catapulting the Trump administration into another pitched battle over whether the president is deploying federal resources to demonize foreign-born residents who are in this country illegally.

Kelly said the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, or VOICE, will provide custody status, release dates and other information to victims, witnesses and their representatives. He said there is “nothing but goodness” in his intentions — a claim immigrant advocates disputed.

“We are giving people who are victimized by illegal aliens for the first time a voice of their own,” Kelly said, gesturing to crime victims gathered at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s D.C. headquarters. “They’re casualties of crimes that should never have taken place because the people who victimized them should never have been here in our country.”

. . . .

“This really isn’t about helping victims,” said Brent Wilkes, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is considering the lawsuit. “It’s really about trying to vilify the immigrant population in this country and using that to their political advantage.”

Trump’s executive order also called for quarterly reports on crime committed by undocumented immigrants, though it is unclear when the government will begin producing those reports. Advocates for immigrants say research has shown that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than people born in this country.”

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You might want to compare this article with the op-ed by Jennifer Rubin posted earlier: 

http://wp.me/p8eeJm-L0.

PWS

04-26-17

 

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Hon. Lory D. Rosenberg Replies To Nolan Rappaport’s VOICE Article On “Appeal Matters”

Here’s Lory’s blog reprinted in full with her permission:

Lory D. Rosenberg on Appeal Matters
Why President Trump’s VOICE is Misplaced and Serves No One Draft Blog Entry Edit Blog Entry
0 Comments
by Lrosenberg, 03-02-2017 at 09:14 PM (0 Views)

The VOICE office announced by President Trump in his SOTU speech on Tuesday night is the most disturbing, offensive, and misplaced priority he could have chosen to address the pressing need for immigration reform.

Moreover, it astonishes me how anyone with an understanding of the reality of the overwhelmingly positive immigrant contributions to our workforce, our communities, and our society as a whole could applaud such folly. It is mind-boggling that a person who purports to understand immigration law can honestly praise its introduction. Cf. N. Rappaport, Opinion Contributor, The Hill, “On immigrant crime, Trump’s right. Americans deserve more data” (3/1/17).

Establishment of such a new office panders to unsubstantiated, and in fact, soundly refuted, fears of an immigrant crime wave, and fosters public hysteria that is utterly unfounded. Are there serious crimes committed by immigrants? Yes, although very few are violent offenses. They generally involve violations of state, not federal, law, and they are duly prosecuted and punished in our courts, without regard to the perpetrator’s immigration status. Any claimed value to the victim in connecting ICE to removable aliens for “information” is pure fantasy.

Moreover, proportionately, the immigrant crime rate is minimal compare to the crimes committed by the native population in the United States. See Ewing, W and Rumbaut, R., SPECIAL REPORT The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States, http://www.americanimmigration council.org/research/criminalization-immigration-united-states. A federal program for victims of crime committed by an immigrant as opposed to a United States citizen, erroneously propagates the destructive misconception that immigrants are mostly criminals. Cf. Spenkuch, Jörg L., Understanding the Impact of Immigration on Crime, 16 American Law and Economics Review 1,177-219 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/aht017.

As leading scholar on immigrants and crime, Professor Ruben G. Rumbaut has stated,

“It [the VOICE office] will serve further to drive up fear and to sigmatize entire immigrant populations as criminals, using rare anecdotes to publicize misleading claims, even though every research study over many decades shows exactly the opposite: immigrants, including the undocumented, have the lowest crime (both violent and property crimes) and the lowest incarceration rates in the US.”

What is more, the policy changes anticipated since President Trump’s inauguration may dismantle much needed agency resources that support implementation of critical humanitarian and domestic violence efforts, such as VAWA and other critical programs that have been part of DHS’s portfolio. Those are the most important victim support resources that are needed. Information collection and communication can be achieved easily and made available to victims, policymakers, and scholars alike through accurate agency reporting.

There are more than adequate local police programs, as well as private and faith-based programs, available to victims of all crime in their communities. That is where victims will find the information and restitution they may seek. One would think an administration that seeks to reduce the the federal bureaucracy and rely upon the states to address all but those problems that demand federal intervention would shrink from imposing a duplicative and unnecessary venture that is likely to offer little more than one night of celebrity in a television audience.

Trump’s self-indulgent VOICE office paints a target on the backs of honorable, hard-working immigrants – and others who look like immigrants – in our population. He may derive satisfaction from the publicity of such a pointless gesture, but the office’s establishment does nothing to reform a deeply broken system that victimizes immigrants and citizens alike each day that nothing is done to reform it.

c.2017 Lory D. Rosenberg

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PWS

03/02/17

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