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Mr Morrison has also opened the way to stand Mr Porter aside. The Prime Minister has taken advice from the Solicitor-General. He is now talking to his own department about how that sits with ministerial standards and intends to make further decisions about the West Australian MPs future.

The Prime Minister said he was very open to the idea of introducing quotas for female MPs. Labor introduced quotas for women running in winnable seats in the mid-1990s, which has led to almost half the federal caucus being female compared with just one-quarter of the Coalition.

Ministers Marise Payne, Karen Andrews, Sussan Ley and Melissa Price spoke out in support of the measure along with a slate of other Liberal MPs as the party searches for ways to recruit more women into Parliament in an effort to change its culture.

We tried it the other way and it isnt getting us the results we would like to see, so I would like to see us do better on that front, Mr Morrison said, adding he thought many other Liberals were coming to a similar view.

Ms Andrews is one of those changing her mind, saying the work done so far hasnt had the success that its needed so far.

Ive always been quite anti-quotas because I felt that it was a disadvantage to women because they would be perceived as only getting promoted, only getting a job because they were a number, she said. We cant continue doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. So Im certainly open to a discussion about quotas.

Cabinet minister Karen Andrews has flipped her anti-quotas stance because the Liberals hadnt been successful at getting enough women into parliament.Credit:Allex Ellinghausen

Ms Ley said that right now she was for the outcome more than the mechanism but she had called for a debate on quotas for some time.

We need more women believing they can run for politics and knowing they will be supported in doing so, she said.

Senator Payne, the Minister for Women, said there were significant frustrations in encouraging more Liberal women into Parliament and the party should take a good, hard look at quotas because, clearly, there are ongoing issues that mean in parts of our organisation we have not been able to achieve the outcomes we want.

Ms Price said the party had to have a serious conversation involving men and women about what quotas would mean, although she did not see them as the only answer.

Liberal backbencher Katie Allen said she was open to quotas if they helped get more women in the decision-making room, and Senator Hollie Hughes said everything should be back on the table. Veteran MP Russell Broadbent, who has asked the Prime Minister to convene a summit of womens organisations, also thinks quotas are a good idea.

Melissa McIntosh, who represents the western Sydney seat Lindsay, said she had an honest and detailed discussion with the Prime Minister last week that included talking about the experience in the corporate sector with quotas and other mechanisms such as mentorship programs that were effective at elevating women into leadership positions.

The corporate sector has for many years been implementing quotas, and I support evidence-based programs drawing on the experience of the corporate sector that have proven success, she said.

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However, other female MPs, including Fiona Martin and Nicolle Flint, believe reportable targets are a better option than mandatory quotas.

I didnt come to Canberra to fill a quota, Dr Martin said.

The Liberal Partys federal executive has recently backed a range of measures aimed at increasing the number of women among its ranks, including continuing the Enid Lyons Fighting Fund to support Liberal women running for office or re-election. Half of the new federal MPs elected in 2019 were women.

Progress has been made. However, much more needs to be done, a party spokesman said.

Mr Morrison acknowledged that many people had not liked or appreciated his own personal responses to the allegations of sexual assault and harassment.

He has come under criticism first for saying his wife, Jenny, had told him to think about Ms Higgins as if she were one of his daughters, and for making remarks in Parliament that were interpreted as saying women should be grateful they were not shot for protesting. But he said he had listened to the stories of women over the past month.

He spoke of women being too afraid to call out bad behaviour for fear of losing their job, of being overlooked and treated like they have nothing valuable to contribute.

I have heard about being marginalised, women being intimidated, women being belittled, women being diminished, and women being objectified. That is not OK. Women who are afraid to walk to their car from the train, and they carry their keys in their hand like a knife for fear of being attacked. That is not OK. That is not acceptable, Mr Morrison said.

Colleagues in the party room said they believed the Prime Minister was now leaning into the issue and pointed out he had a history of getting behind issues only when he intended to act.

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Mr Morrison addressed all Coalition staff on Tuesday afternoon and said there would soon be mandatory face-to-face workplace health and safety training for MPs and staff. He also intends to establish a Coalition staff reference group as a catch-all advocacy team where people could raise issues informally, ask for advice and have complaints taken forward anonymously, and a Coalition human resources team to provide more formal guidance.

A Coalition staffer was sacked on Monday night for filming himself performing a sex act over a female Liberal MPs desk, while another video showed him performing a sex act on a man in a parliamentary office.

The government is trying to find out the identities of other staff Ten News reported had shared photos and videos of themselves performing lewd acts in Parliament House.

Finance Minister Simon Birmingham, whose department is the formal employer of all political staff, said the only thing standing between other staff members involved and their being sacked was their identification.

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He said colleagues were engaging with the female MP whose office appeared in one of the videos and she had been made aware of her options if she wanted further support.

Labors Don Farrell asked Senator Birmingham in a Senate estimates hearing whether he was aware that non-political staff in Parliament House had attempted to meet union representatives with concerns about the Ten News reports, but the union officials were blocked from entering the building. Senator Birmingham said it was the first he or Senate President Scott Ryan had heard of the matter and undertook to investigate.

The governments formal response to Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins landmark workplace sexual harassment report, Respect@Work, is now expected within weeks.

Ms Jenkins is also starting a review of the workplace culture within Parliament House, and outlined her plans to Coalition MPs on Tuesday. She met with Labor MPs and staff last week. She made it clear her intention was not to investigate individual complaints but to outline how to create the cultural reform needed.

National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line: 1800 737 732.

Our Morning Edition newsletter is a curated guide to the most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up toThe Sydney Morning Heralds newsletterhere,The Ageshere,Brisbane Timeshere, andWAtodayshere.

Katina Curtis is a political reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House in Canberra.

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We tried it the other way: Morrison and ministers push Liberals to adopt quotas - Sydney Morning Herald

Immigration-rights activists held a car rally outside of Rep. Young Kims (R-Fullerton) office on Wednesday as part of a national effort to advocate for legal status for 11 million immigrants.

The event was part of Relay Across America, which was launched by immigrant-rights groups CHIRLA and FIRM Action Network.

The effort was aimed at drawing attention and support for the U.S. Citizenship Act, an immigration reform bill that President Joe Biden sent to Congress in late January. The bill would provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants who lack legal status in the country, including people who are temporarily protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

About 20 cars drove by Kims office in Placentia in the early afternoon. The caravan was followed by a short press conference.

Cars with immigration reform advocates line up during a rally in front of Rep. Young Kims office in Placentia on Wednesday, March 24.

(Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer)

The U.S. Citizenship Act is important to me because Ive made a promise to my parents, said Karen Osorio, a DACA recipient with CHIRLA. We shouldnt conform to DACA, we need an immigration reform for all 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S.

I am a mother to a 3-year-old, Sophia. And Ive made a promise to her. I cant imagine being deported and separated from her. I am fighting for her. We demand Representative Young Kim to stand with immigrants and support the U.S. Citizenship Act.

As they spoke, activists honked their horns in support.

At one point, a man who would not identify himself got into a screaming argument with the activists.

Kims spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment regarding the rally.

During a phone interview prior to the rally, Janeth Bucio, Orange County regional organizer for CHIRLA, said that events will be held in other states, but the group has particularly focused on California because of the undocumented population.

David Jimes, with CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, holds a sign during a press conference in front of Rep. Young Kims office in Placentia on Wednesday, March 24.

(Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer)

Bucio said they chose to bring the rally to Kims office to let her know that shes in a congressional district that has a very significant amount of undocumented constituents.

The House approved two immigration reform bills last week that Kim voted against.

Young Kim hasnt really done anything so far to let us know that she supports the immigrant community, Bucio said.

Bucio said CHIRLA also partnered with St. Philip Benizi Church in Fullerton, the LGBTQ Orange County center and OCCCO for the event.

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Activists hold car rally for immigration reform in front of Rep. Young Kim's office - Los Angeles Times

The United States could eventually grant citizenship to roughly 2.5 million undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children.

The American Dream and Promise Act of 2021, which passed in the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives on March 18, would give a group known as the Dreamers permanent resident status for 10 years. They could then apply to be naturalized as U.S. citizens.

Only nine House Republicans voted for the bill, so in its current form it is unlikely to pass the Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans. For over a decade, all congressional efforts to protect Dreamers have died in the Senate.

In 2012, President Barack Obama bypassed Congress with an executive order to help this group of immigrants. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, granted the temporary right to live, study and work to about 800,000 undocumented immigrants age 30 or younger who had come to the U.S. before age 16.

President Donald Trump rescinded DACA in fall 2017, asking Congress to resolve the Dreamers legal limbo by March 2018. Congress hasnt passed any legislation to resolve Dreamers status; the American Dream and Promise Act is an effort to attempt that.

Heres some key background and expert analysis on the Dreamers and DACA as the debate advances to the Senate.

Researchers who evaluated DACA found the program benefited both Dreamers and the United States.

Wayne Cornelius, a professor emeritus of U.S.-Mexican relations at the University of California, San Diego, led a research team that interviewed dozens of DACA recipients in 2014. He found that work permits enabled them to get higher-paying jobs.

This made college more affordable and increased their tax contributions. DACA [also encouraged] them to invest more in their education because they knew legal employment would be available when they completed their degree, Cornelius wrote in 2017.

A survey conducted earlier that year of some 3,000 DACA recipients found that 97% were currently employed or enrolled in school, and many had started their own businesses.

But DACA had significant limitations, according to Cornelius. Because their work authorization had to be renewed every two years, for example, some employers were reluctant to hire Dreamers.

Still, research found, DACA enabled recipients to further their education and obtain jobs and health insurance, wrote migration specialists Elizabeth Aranda and Elizabeth Vaquera in September 2017.

The program gave the Dreamers peace of mind something that, until then, was unfamiliar to them.

Nearly 80% of DACA recipients came from Mexico. So when the Trump administration in September 2017 set DACA protections to expire within six months, the decision affected Mexico, too.

Ending DACA exposes 618,342 undocumented young Mexicans to deportation, wrote political scientist Luis Gmez Romero.

Gmez Romero said the DACA decision could be read as a power play in Trumps ongoing battle with the government of Mexico over its refusal to pay for a border wall.

By early 2018, with DACA soon to expire, Congress was in a scramble for a solution, according to Kevin Johnson, a dean and professor of Chicana/o studies at the University of California, Davis. That month, a congressional showdown over the Dreamers closed the federal government for 69 hours.

While some conservatives have balked at the idea of giving amnesty to any lawbreakers, he wrote, some progressives found DACA too narrow.

According to the Migration Policy Initiative, DACA excluded about 1 million unauthorized immigrants who met most criteria for DACA but had not completed their education, had committed a crime or feared applying to DACA because of worry their undocumented parents could be deported.

Trump reentered the fray in January 2018 with a proposed path to legalization for 1.8 million Dreamers. The trade-off for siding with Democrats: Congress had to fund his U.S.-Mexico border wall.

That proposal, too, failed.

The Dreamers plight has forced the Supreme Court to get involved on several occasions.

In 2017 the court issued an injunction on Trumps termination of the program, allowing DACA recipients to renew their protected status for another two-year period while other lawsuits proceeded. In June 2020, the court ruled the Trump administration could not actually dismantle DACA because it had not provided adequate justification for doing so.

That gave the Dreamers another respite, but DACA remained in danger because the 2020 ruling was not about whether the president of the United States has the authority to rescind DACA, wrote political scientist Morgan Marietta of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. All of the parties involved agreed that he does.

The case merely confirmed that a president cannot lie about the rationale underlying his executive orders.

The justices narrow decision left open the possibility that the administration could try to rescind DACA at a later date, wrote Marietta.

Joe Bidens election forestalled that. His administration is pushing Congress to undertake comprehensive immigration reform that would create pathways to citizenship not only for the Dreamers but also for other undocumented immigrants, including farmworkers.

Any immigration overhaul must tackle a host of new challenges created over the past four years, according to Miranda Cady Hallett, a Central America immigration expert at the University of Dayton.

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Trump made over 400 changes to immigration policy, by Halletts tally, including barring immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries and separating families at the border.

While many presidents have deported large numbers of undocumented immigrants, Trumps immigration enforcement was more random and punitive, writes Hallett. It vastly increas[ed] criminal prosecutions for immigration-related offenses and remov[ed] people who have been in the U.S. longer.

That includes the Dreamers.

After a decade of legal battles and political threats, the Dreamers arent so young anymore. Many in the original group of 800,000 are pushing 40.

Read more here:
Citizenship for the 'Dreamers'? 6 essential reads on DACA and immigration reform - The Conversation US

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) spoke about immigration reform on Thursday and called on the Biden Administration to send a stronger message to South America.

During a live Congressional update on 17 News at 5 p.m., the Hanford Congressman said many migrants are trying to get into the United States by lying about their age and taking advantage of the asylum system.

During the interview, Valadao said he agreed with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) that the situation at the border has been made worse by the current administration.

I think they have to send a stronger message to South America, Valadao said of the Biden White House. The president is starting to do that now, but when he first came into office and started to back away from some of the asylum rules that [former President] Trump tried to put in place, it started to send some of these people over, he continued.

Valadao voted in favor of two immigration that recently passed in the house. One bill would create a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers young adult undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. The other bill would allow undocumented agriculture workers to apply for legal status if they pay a fine and agree to work another four to eight years in the agriculture sector.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy voted against the pieces of legislation, arguing they will worsen the situation at the US-Mexico border.

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During congressional update, Rep. Valadao speaks on immigration reform, calls on Biden to send stronger message to South America - KGET 17

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Immigrants are substantial contributors to Southwestern Pennsylvanias success and are crucial to our ability to respond and rebuild from the pandemic. Today, over 70,000 undocumented immigrants, including 1,700 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, work in essential roles across the state. Even as undocumented immigrants contribute heavily to our economy and workforce, their status is riddled with uncertainty.

The region has continued to lose population each year from out-migration, more deaths than births, declining fertility replacement rates and a decline in immigration. Benchmark regions have gained population and, in many cases, surpassed Pittsburgh. Attracting and retaining foreign-born talent and college graduates is crucial for building our economy and addressing our workforce shortages and our ability to compete for the investment we need to reach our goal of a globally competitive, inclusive region. Without DACA, our state could lose $323 million annually in GDP and $204 million in annual state and local taxes.

Thankfully, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Dream and Promise Act last week, creating a pathway to citizenship for the DACA recipients and DACA-eligible individuals who strengthen our communities and economy. This bill wont just help the immigrant community but all Pennsylvanians. The DACA program allows those who came to the U.S. at a young age the ability to legally work and study.

I hope our leaders in the U.S. Senate, including Sen. Pat Toomey, follow suit to establish a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have only ever known Pennsylvania as home.

Matt Smith

Downtown

Categories:Letters to the Editor | Opinion

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Letter to the editor: Immigration reform will rebuild our economy - TribLIVE