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.
