New York Times
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
State Proposals on Illegal Immigration Largely Falter
By JULIA PRESTON
Lawmakers in dozens of state legislatures, impatient with Congress's lack of action to overhaul immigration law, have proposed hundreds of measures on the issue this year, most aimed at restricting illegal immigrants' access to public benefits and drivers' licenses.
But few bills to clamp down on illegal immigration have made it into law, meeting determined resistance from unlikely alliances uniting Latino community groups and civil liberties advocates with law enforcement officials and local chambers of commerce.
The array of state initiatives reflect uneasiness among voters across the country about the growing presence of illegal immigrants, especially in states — like North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona — where immigrant populations have surged in recent years.
"It was a way to wake up the federal government to do something, after they let down the entire country on illegal immigration," said Steve Gallardo, a Democratic state representative in Arizona, where the Legislature has been battling nonstop on the issue since January.
So far this year, no fewer than 461 bills related to immigration have been offered in the 43 states where legislatures have been in session, according to a survey by Ann Morse of the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
Proposals have been offered to bar immigrants who cannot prove legal status from obtaining nonemergency health benefits, in-state rates of tuition and financial aid for college, and unemployment assistance. A host of bills sought to ensure that workers had legal documents and to enforce sanctions against employers who hired illegal immigrants. Other measures proposed authorizing local and state police agencies to enforce federal immigration laws.
One of the most significant bills to win passage was in Georgia, which adopted a broad measure barring illegal immigrants from many state benefits, requiring employers to verify the status of workers and mandating that jailers alert federal officials to anyone incarcerated who is in the country illegally.
But a count compiled by Ms. Morse last week found that only 19 measures had been enacted nationwide, and just 12 of them imposed on illegal immigrants any restrictions that were significant.
"There were a slew of punitive measures introduced across the country," said Tanya Broder, a lawyer in Oakland, Calif., with the National Immigration Law Center, which promotes immigrant rights and monitors legislation on the issue. "But most of them either failed upon consideration by legislatures, or were narrowed to the point where they are largely symbolic."
In Tennessee, which the Pew Hispanic Center estimates is home to 100,000 or more illegal immigrants, at least 20 immigration bills have been introduced in the last year. The resulting clash centered on a drivers' certificate the state created in May 2004, which authorized illegal immigrants who lived there to drive but which could not be used as an identity document for any other purpose.
Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, suspended the program in February after the arrest of a Knoxville resident who had been ferrying in illegal immigrants from New Jersey. She had been allowing them to use her address to obtain certificates so that they might try to drive in other states.
Republican lawmakers led a campaign to cancel the certificate outright and impose other curbs on illegal immigrants. "We're a country where people all their lives have to obey the laws," said State Senator Bill Ketron, a leader of the effort. "Those who come here illegally don't pay any attention to those laws. That's what's dividing our country right now."
But the campaign ran up against concerted opposition from an alliance of groups that had gained lobbying skills in defending the certificate program.
Stephen Fotopulos, policy director for one such group, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said, "There's a lot of frustration in our state with the broken federal immigration system, and people unfortunately have decided that anti-immigrant rhetoric will be politically advantageous."
Although the certificate program remains suspended, the attempts to cancel it were defeated. But one of Senator Ketron's bills, requiring that the drivers' license examination be given only in English, passed the Senate and is still moving forward in the lower house.
In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency last year because of growing violence at the Mexican border, but efforts to revoke a state law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses were beaten back.
Immigrant rights groups forged alliances with local sheriffs and businesses three years ago to win enactment of that law, which permits applicants for drivers' licenses to present alternative forms of identification if they have no Social Security or visa number.
"We worked hard building those relations with law enforcement," said Marcela Díaz, director of Somos un Pueblo Unido (We Are a United People), a group that spearheaded those efforts. "When it comes to passing these laws, we face no strong organized opposition."
In Virginia, where the Pew center estimates 250,000 illegal immigrants live, some 40 immigration measures have been offered this year. Most have sought to expand on restrictions in a bill enacted in March 2005 that bars illegal immigrants from state benefits including Medicaid and welfare. But so far only one new measure has passed, ordering law enforcement officials to report illegal immigrant minors who commit serious crimes to federal immigration authorities.
In Virginia elections last November, Republican candidates trumpeted plans to get tough on illegal immigration. But some discovered that the issue had unexpected wrinkles.
One of them, State Senator Emmett W. Hanger Jr., was a prime mover of the 2005 bill. This year he offered a proposal to deny in-state college tuition to illegal immigrant students — with some important exceptions. His proposal would make those students eligible if they had graduated from Virginia high schools and were seeking to become United States citizens, and if their parents had been living and paying taxes in the state for three years.
Mr. Hanger said he drafted the exemptions after legislative hearings where one witness, an illegal immigrant student, had just returned from a military tour in Iraq.
To his surprise, many of Mr. Hanger's Republican allies from the 2005 legislative fight deserted him over the new bill, maintaining that he was encouraging lawbreakers.
"But I picked up some new friends," he said, among liberal groups that mobilized behind his cause.
The most contentious debates have probably been in Arizona.
In November 2004, the voters there led the nation on restrictive measures by adopting a ballot initiative, Proposition 200, that barred illegal immigrants from receiving taxpayer-financed health and welfare services. In the last year the Legislature, spurred by a Republican representative, Russell K. Pearce, has passed a series of new restrictive measures. But Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, has stopped a number of them with her veto.
This month Ms. Napolitano signed a measure that laid out in more detail the requirements on immigrants to prove they are here legally before receiving health benefits, a refinement of Proposition 200. But she vetoed a bill that would have made illegal immigrants' presence a crime under trespass laws, and another that would have required her to dispatch National Guard troops to guard the border.
Mr. Pearce said of the governor, "Why would you sit by and tolerate the destruction of our American neighborhoods and the insecurity of our borders?" He has prepared a broad new proposal to strengthen sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants and to provide millions for new border and immigration patrols by state law enforcement agencies.
While most of the clashes across the country have involved proposed restrictions on illegal immigrants, some states have voted to expand access for them. On April 13, the Nebraska Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican, and allowed illegal immigrant students to pay in-state college tuition.
And there is good news for party-going illegal immigrants in Wyoming. A measure recently adopted there ensures that they are eligible to rent kegs of beer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/us/09states.html?pagewanted=print
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
