Is California ready for an Arizona-style immigration bill?
California may be the next battleground in the ongoing battle over illegal immigration. A group headed by Michael S. Erickson is organizing to collect enough signatures to get an initiative on the state ballot which would mirror Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration bill. The group, Support Federal Immigration Law, would have to collect over 430,000 signatures by April 21 to qualify for the 2012 ballot.
The bill would require police officers at the local and state level to check the immigration status of individuals stopped for other reasons if they have reasonable suspicion that the individual is here illegally. The bill, if it becomes law via the initiative process, would also make it against the law for employers to hire illegal immigrants, intentionally or not. The measure also would prohibit so-called sanctuary cities.
Erickson said in a recent Tea Party meeting that a series of polls show that if the initiative reaches the ballot that it will pass overwhelmingly, as previous immigration initiatives have. California voters passed Proposition 187 in 1994 by a wide margin, which denied state benefits to illegal immigrants, only to see it voided by the courts in 1999.
Erickson is scheduled to speak about the proposed initiative at a meeting of the Golden Gate Minutemen, on Saturday, December 4th at the Union City Library.
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