Groups target states' illegal-immigration bills

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Groups target states' illegal-immigration bills
WASHINGTON — The Arizona Senate recently struck down five bills that aimed to prevent illegal immigrants from using schools, hospitals or other state services — the latest setback for tough state bills targeting illegal immigration. After Arizona last year passed its immigration enforcement bill, which would have given police officers more powers to enforce immigration laws, legislators in dozens of states filed similar legislation. A complex web of Hispanic groups, business associations, farm bureaus, civil rights organizations and lawyers has crafted a state-by-state attack against such proposals and is starting to see results.
The latest victory came March 17 when the Arizona Senate rejected the five bills that also would have barred illegal immigrants from buying or driving cars or getting marriage licenses.
"After what happened last year, many expected there was going to be an across-the-board wave of these bills and they would be slam-dunks," said Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group. "But legislatures are realizing that it's a risky proposition."
Several states are considering bills that would mirror Arizona's S.B. 1070, which would have required all state law enforcement officers to determine the immigration status of people stopped, detained or arrested for another offense if there was a "reasonable suspicion" that they were in the U.S. illegally. A federal judge halted the core aspects of the law, and that ruling is on appeal.
Different versions of the Arizona law have passed the Mississippi Legislature; similar bills have been passed by the Kentucky and Indiana state senates; and legislators in Utah, Oklahoma and other states continue studying the proposal.
Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which helped Arizona defend its law last year and has advised more than 12 states on similar proposals this year, said it was unrealistic to think dozens of those laws could pass this year. He said state laws generally take years to enact.
"The process is building momentum," Hethmon said.
In several states, the bills have been killed. Arizona-style bills failed in Colorado, Kentucky, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to the National Immigration Forum, which opposes such legislation.
A variety of tactics were used to stop the bills:
•In Texas, groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund have teamed with chambers of commerce to explain the economic damage a strict enforcement bill would have on the state.
•In Florida and Georgia, farm groups have warned legislators about the damage an exodus of legal and illegal workers would have on agriculture.
•In South Dakota and other states, law enforcement groups have argued that immigration enforcement bills would strain overworked officers.
•In Kentucky and Mississippi, activists compare the struggles faced by Hispanic immigrants — legal and illegal — to those of African Americans in the 1960s.
"Mississippi is very difficult because there is a very entrenched, white-supremacist sentiment here," said Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, which works with the local chapter of the NAACP to fight anti-immigration bills. "African Americans saw what was happening to Latinos as the same thing that happened to their families."
Those who sponsor strict anti-immigration bills say it's unfair to label them as racists.
"It was asked to me point-blank, 'Why do you hate Mexicans?' " said Colorado state Rep. Randy Baumgardner, a Republican who filed an Arizona-style bill. "I don't hate Spanish people."
Baumgardner said such bills are necessary because illegal immigrants are getting jobs ahead of Americans and legal immigrants who need work and they are further draining diminished state budgets through the services they receive in schools and hospitals, for example.
Like other state legislators, Baumgardner pulled his bill last month when he realized how much it would cost to implement and defend against lawsuits.
"I thought the bill was a good piece of legislation," he said. "I just didn't want to burden the people of Colorado" with legal costs.
The lawsuits would definitely come. A group of lawyers who sued Arizona last year over its law continues to monitor all anti-immigration legislation.
Cecilia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said it's ready to sue but would prefer to avoid that.
Lawsuits are "expensive for us, too, and divert us from doing other things," she said. "But we're ready and prepared to respond in any state that passes one of these laws."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...ion28_ST_N.htm

[ilbegone]

Cecilia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said it's ready to sue but would prefer to avoid that.
Lawsuits are "expensive for us, too, and divert us from doing other things,"

It would spread the ACLU extremely thin if every state were to pass immigration laws modeled on federal law.

[maggieb60]

We are pushing texas reps to pass bills to stop illegals, we managed to get the voter id bill passed. Yeah