California Values Act
/Blog: California Values Act
What is The California Values Act (SB 54)?
SB 54 is a bill introduced by Senator Kevin de León that protects all Californians by ensuring that state and local resources are not used for mass deportations, separation of families or to divide Californians on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, immigration status, or national or ethnic group. This bill would create “safe zones” around public places such as public schools, courthouses and hospitals. Immigration enforcement would be banned from these places and this bill would also require these agencies to update their confidentiality policies so that immigration status is not shared for enforcement purposes.
Background
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump has publicly stated his stance against immigration, where he threatened to increase deportations and target the Muslim community. He also threatened to cut the funding from cities or counties that declare themselves “sanctuary.” This puts cities and counties in a limbo, to decide between cooperating with immigration enforcement or to lose their funding.
Why is this bill important to our community?
This bill is important to the immigrant community because if local and state agencies cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the immigrant community will lose the hard-earned trust of our local agencies. Broken trust can lead our immigrant community to discontinue to seek for services such as health services, educational services or will fear to inquire for law enforcement’s help if they are victims or witnesses of a crime to avoid being questioned about their immigration status. When a community has a strong trust with its local and state authorities, it is more likely to be successful community because everyone is willing to work together. It is very important that this trust is kept strong between the community and local and state law enforcement because we can ensure a healthier California. Under this bill, local and state authorities can cooperate with immigration officials if immigration officials can provide an ICE Administrative Warrant.
It is important to oppose the Muslim registry or any registration system based on the protected categories list because we are generalizing a whole religion based solely on religion. People shouldn’t be distinguished by their government based on their religion.
