Submitted by Conor Kenny on
On Congresspedia we are continuing to profile important votes this year in Congress as a way of building the same kind of "permanent records" for members of Congress that school kids used to get threatened with. You can help keep Congress accountable by taking five minutes to add information on how your senators or representative voted to their Congresspedia profiles, thus ensuring that the tens of thousands of people who come to the site every day get a chance to know what it is that their elected officials are doing in Washington.
Following on the previous featured participatory projects to record the votes on the scuttled Children's Health Insurance Program expansion and the Senate's controversial confirmation of Bush's nominee for Attorney General, this week we are turning to this year's important votes on immigration. For help we enlisted the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, which selected two votes this year on immigration for its middle class scorecard at theMiddleClass.org. The first was a vote to strip this summer's comprehensive immigration reform bill of its provisions to provide paths to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, leaving only enforcement measures in place (something opposed by DMI). The second was last month's vote to quash the DREAM Act, which would have granted a path to permanent residency for young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children but would like to attend college or serve in the U.S. military (supported by DMI).
No matter what you think of these bills, these votes were on dramatic changes in our country's immigration policies and deserve to be recorded. And, to make sure that all perspectives were covered, we've also included criticisms from bill opponents like the Heritage Foundation.
No policy or technical expertise is necessary - just click here for full instructions on how to easily add this information to your Senators' permanent records. Thanks and have fun!
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