Tag Archives: Citizenship

Sotomayor: Ruling Against Foreign Spouses Will ‘Most Heavily’ Harm Same-Sex Couples

“The majority’s failure to respect the right to marriage in this country consigns U.S. citizens to rely on the fickle grace of other countries’ immigration laws.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 6-21-2024 by Common Dreams

United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaking to attendees at the John P. Frank Memorial Lecture at Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. in 2017. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/CC

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned Friday that her right-wing colleagues’ finding that American citizens have no right to have their foreign spouses admitted to the United States will disproportionately harm same-sex couples—and could foreshadow a future reversal of federal LGBTQ+ marriage equality.

The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Department of State v. Muñoz that Sandra Muñoz, a civil rights attorney and U.S. citizen, “does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country.”

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‘Our Moment to Win Citizenship’: Budget Package Provides Hope to Millions of Undocumented People

“We will bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

By Kenny Stancil, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-9-2021

About 3000 people gathered at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis to stand in solidarity with immigrants and refugees in February 2017. Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/CC

The $3.5 trillion budget resolution introduced Monday by Senate Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders includes billions of dollars for Congress to establish a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, giving progressives a reason to cheer.

“We will bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee and key architect of what he called “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s. Continue reading →

Vote “as if” your life depends on it

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By occupostal for Occupy World Writes

By Minnesota Historical Society [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

1956 Window display promoting voting, Dayton’s, Minneapolis. By Minnesota Historical Society [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

My first impulse was to exhort you to vote in our upcoming American elections on November 4. Yes, it matters. In a number of ways. Just Google “importance of voting” and you’ll get a litany of useful reasons that can be generalized no matter where you stand politically. Many of them will fall within this framework: (1) You and your vote are crucial to the democratic process that our government depends on—we don’t govern ourselves directly, but we need representatives who reflect our concerns and needs and can improve our lives. (2) The more local the election, the greater your impact in voting—and the greater the impact that the reps who get elected will have on your day-to-day life, because you live right here, not just in the “nation at large” or in your “virtual life” online. (3) Finally, if you don’t vote in an informed way you’ll wind up with a government of reps that answer to lowest common denominator partisanship and the big money that promoted those reps and to which their governing will inevitably (given human nature) answer. So if you don’t have the single hobbyhorse issue that extreme partisans tend to, or the deep pockets of the 1% elect, you had better vote and vote smartly informed.

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