Common Sense Immigration Reform
Founded in 2007 by MALDEF, the Texas Association of Business and the ACLU of Texas in response to proposals that would harm Texas families and communities, TRUST is a coalition of business, religious and advocacy organizations calling on Texas state leaders to support legislation consistent with the following principles:
- Encourage economic development and creation of new jobs in Texas;
- Encourage economic development and trade to flourish along the Texas-Mexico border while ensuring public safety;
- Encourage Latin American economic development, to decrease the flow of economic migrants over time;
- Recognize the economic contributions of the immigrant workforce;
- Ensure that Texas employers who are acting in good faith, consistent with federal immigration laws, will not be targeted by punitive state measures;
- Ensure that employers, landlords, businesses or private individuals do not play the role of immigration agents;
- Affirm that state agencies or municipalities do not have the obligation to enforce complex immigration laws, and avoid the creation of burdensome new bureaucracies;
- Encourage the use of reliable, verifiable forms of identification for all Texans to ensure public safety, while rejecting obstacles that prevent access to identification or driver licenses;
- Avoid reliance on unreliable technology, including the E-verify database;
- Protect equality of all U.S. citizen children under the Constitution;
- Support the removal of barriers to deter crime victims, witnesses and other residents from contacting local law enforcement, reporting crimes or assisting with investigations;
- Create measures of accountability for border security programs to ensure that taxpayer funds be used to promote long-term public safety improvements for the border region;
- Ensure that local law enforcement resources are not directed toward enforcing civil immigration laws;
- Encourage legislation that is not divisive and avoids the scapegoating of immigrants;
- Preserve access to healthcare to benefit the public health of all Texans;
- Assure access for all Texas children to education at all levels, including affordable higher education, thereby reducing drop-outs, closing achievement gaps, and improving workforce competitiveness;
- Support bilingual education and other means that are proven effective to teach foreign languages to increase our global competitiveness; and
- Implement policies that embrace the cultural diversity of the state of Texas.