Cristal

“On August 22, 1996, Clinton signed the bill into law, but at a press conference several days earlier he had promised to find some way to eventually undo the damage. “I am deeply disappointed that the congressional leadership insisted on attaching to this extraordinarily important bill a provision that will hurt legal immigrants in America,” he had said from a dais at the White House. “This provision has nothing to do with welfare reform; it is simply a budget-saving measure, and it is not right.”
― Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

“To Muñoz’s mind, it was as though Congress were telling them, “You’re not us yet.” Muñoz’s parents were already citizens, but when she heard Republicans talk about how noncitizens didn’t “deserve” these protections, she nevertheless thought of her own family. She was reminded of a story her parents had told her about having once been threatened with eviction from an apartment for being overheard “speaking Mexican.”
― Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

“Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, delivered the keynote. “Woe to our society if to be human becomes a heroic act,” he said.”
― Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

“TPS holders would become permanently stuck with a status that was meant to be provisional. Republican and Democratic administrations found it easier to renew their TPS status every two years than to create an actual route to citizenship for those who had built lives in the US over decades.”
― Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis