We must establish human-centered and inclusionary immigration policy that respects, celebrates and helps continue the essential role of immigrants in our nation’s past, present and future by first repealing: 

• The disastrous 1996 immigration laws and related provisions that have created heinous policy like the three and ten year bars that prevent undocumented immigrants who leave the U.S. from returning for specific periods of time, which have forced undocumented individuals to leave the U.S. while they await citizenship, despite qualifying for legal status.
• Mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
• Permanent deportation, which has led to individuals being permanently excluded from reentry for minor violations like failing to appear for a court hearing.
• Expedited removal, which allows for removal even without due process such as the ability to appear before an immigration judge.
• The “Constitution-Free Zone,” which allows CBP officials to essentially “waive” Fourth Amendment protections and engage in arbitrary stops and searchers and to operate checkpoints up to 100-miles inside our borders. 

We must 

• Clear bureaucratic backlogs to employer-based and family-sponsored visas.
• Reclassify spouses, permanent partners and children of Green Card holders as immediate relatives.
• Strengthen LGBTQ+ protections by allowing citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their partner even if the partner lives in a country that does not recognize marriage equality.
• Allow children, permanent partners, and spouses of H1-B visa holders to obtain a work permit.
• Create statutory exceptions to the one-year filing requirement for asylum seekers.
• Provide expanded work permit authorization and protection to the millions of undocumented immigrants living in our country, including the ability to renew work permits when EOIR proceedings are on appeal.
• Expand and expedite the asylum-seeker track by eliminating the 1-year asylum filing requirement, codifying certain particular social groups. 
• Protect Dreamers and make DACA permanent.
• Make prosecutorial discretion to dismiss or administratively close proceedings, permanent.
• Reassess and stipulate an expanded number of visas for each respective category, including, clearing waiting lists like those waiting to receive permanent residency relief through a 42B grant. 

And we must fully fund and move jurisdiction of immigration and asylum courts from the DOJ, which is under the Executive Branch, to the independent Judiciary, to help empower our immigration judges to make decisions on a case by case basis.  This would reduce the politicization of our immigration system as anti-immigration federal officials can easily stifle proceedings within immigration and asylum courts, create backlogs and easily replace judges with political cronies like President Trump did. We must hire more immigration judges to reduce backlog as well. 

Furthermore, we must enact a just pathway to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants in our country. We must increase protections and naturalization opportunities for all undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, regardless of current age. We must abolish ICE and redistribute its necessary functions to the appropriate agencies, creating humane and responsible immigration enforcement. We must end mass deportation and mass immigrant detention by permanently abolishing and outlawing private and for-profit prisons and detention centers. We must decriminalize immigration by making improper entry and reentry a civil, and not criminal, issue. We must abolish and outlaw the use of DNA testing and facial recognition technology by immigration and border enforcement officials, and federal, state and local police departments. We must permit all deported Veterans who were honorably discharged to return to the U.S. and cease the practice of Veteran deportation, and we must automatically grant the option of full citizenship for any who serve in our armed forces.