State Immigration Project Update

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

http://www.progressivestates.org/

State Immigration Project Update


State Immigration Policy Options for 2008

A few states still have time to file new bills, in others lawmakers are scrambling to modify those already.  To assist with both needs, we offer Progressive States Network's State Immigration Project Policy Options for 2008.

This comprehensive policy options packet presents state legislators and advocates with concrete policies, together with legislative examples and links to more resources, that will promote unity among constituent divides that the Right has sought to expound, put anti-immigrant foes on the defensive, and most importantly, promote a state political climate that welcomes newcomers and their integration into our communities.

The document highlights five sets of policies that can directly challenge right-wing views on immigrants and build alternative political coalitions:

  • Wage enforcement as immigration policy
  • Encouraging immigrant integration and naturalization
  • Immigrants and public benefits
  • Voting reform versus "voter ID" attacks
  • Immigrant outreach as public safety and anti-terror policy

If you'd like hard copies of the report, please email a request with name, address, and number of reports to send to immigration@progressivestates.org.

WANTED: Immigration Policy Advocate

The Progressive States Network is seeking a highly motivated individual to work in a team approach as a policy advocate working on immigration
policy in the states. We are looking for an individual to both support individual immigration policy campaigns in states and help build a national legislative network that can institutionalize a humane and strategic immigration policy as a key part of multi-issue legislative coalitions across the country.

Interested in applying, or know someone who should?  Check out the Employment Opportunities page of our website at http://www.progressivestates.org/about/60/jobs-internships#immigration  for more details, qualifications, and application instructions.

Immigration News in the States

News from the States

We daily scour local and national media to bring you the latest immigration policy news from around the country.  To keep this Update email uncluttered and to bring you the latest news even faster, we've made a full list of noteworthy articles and editorials -- broken down by state and issue area -- online at Progressive States Network's State Immigration Project webpage.  We'll update this page as new articles come to our attention, so you don't have to wait two weeks for the next edition of the State Immigration Project Update to keep abreast of what's happening.

Immigration news articles by state

Immigration news articles by issue

In the Workplace

As we described in the last SIP Update, a number of states are addressing domestic sweatshop conditions through increased wage law enforcement. Unfortunately, other states are still pursuing narrow approaches of punishing only employers of undocumented immigrants, while ignoring the broader violation of wage laws hurting all workers.   Chambers in Indiana and South Carolina have both approved bills with employer sanctions for hiring undocumented immigrants, while states like Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky and Wyoming are considering them. 

Many legislators denounced these proposals. Indiana Sen. Tim Lanane questioned whether complaints filed over immigrant hirings would be based on anything other than an employee's race: “I think we are setting a dangerous precedent here.”  Considering the Kentucky bill, House Judiciary Chairwoman Kathy Stein expressed doubt about even holding a vote given that the law was probably preempted by federal law.

Ignoring Business Warnings from OK, AZ and TN: What is disturbing is that states are pursuing these employer sanctions bills despite warnings from many business leaders in both Oklahoma and Arizona of the dire economic effects of the laws in those states.  In Arizona, a housing market already damaged by the sub-prime mortgage mess is being further undermined as immigrant renters have lost their jobs and handed their keys back to landlords.  Other businesses in Arizona are complaining about fears of discrimination and malicious anonymous complaints from competitors, says Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce vice president Todd Sanders.  Similarly, 25,000 immigrants, both legal and undocumented, have left northeastern Oklahoma, according to the Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, leaving struggling businesses in their wake.

In Tennessee, despite the new legal sanctions against hiring undocumented workers, employers are shunning the federal E-Verify system as unreliable, with only 542 our of 117,903 employers registering to use E-Verify.  Nashville immigration lawyer Elliott Ozment has advised business clients not to use the system because "there is a 10 to 15 percent error rate in the database" and employers fear that a person wrongly denied a job using the system could the employer under federal (anti-discrimination) law."

Legislative Reforms Proposed in Oklahoma: State Sen. Harry Coates, the only Republican in the Oklahoma House and Senate who voted against HB 1804, has also filed legislation this session to repeal parts of HB 1804, including:

  • SB 1143 which repeals sections of HB 1804 that deal with harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants;
  • SB 2085 which repeals provisions of HB 1804 requiring employment verification; and
  • SB 1161 which removes some of HB 1804's restrictions for employers who pay at least twice the minimum wage and still cannot find workers to fill positions.  

Republican State Rep. Shane Jett did not vote against the Oklahoma law last year but now says it "will be the single most destructive economic disaster since the Dust Bowl" and wants reforms to create a state-run guest worker taxation and identification program, HB 3206, that would allow undocumented immigrants to pay a fine, then work and pay taxes to cover benefits used by undocumented families, along with other reforms, including HB 3223 to protect churches and non-profits from 1804's crime of harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants.

Immigrant Integration Programs

School districts in Illinois are opening innovative immigrant "welcome centers" to work with both students and their parents to help them better integrate into the community.   In Arizona, 100 school superintendents from across the state rallied at the state Capitol to push for an additional $300 million to better educate new immigrants in English, since while the state has declared English the official language, it hasn't adequately funded schools for English-language instruction.  And a push in Virginia to deny undocumented immigrants in-state tuition has stalled in the state Senate.

Immigrant Benefits

In Kansas, the Wichita Eagle has highlighted the bureaucratic costs of screening programs established in other states, noting Colorado spent $2 million and didn't save a dime, while Kansas spent $1 million last year to comply with federal proof-of-citizenship requirements for the state SCHIP program and caught only one undocumented immigrant using the program.  And as an article in USA Today emphasized, the reality is that anti-immigrant proposals may be discouraging families from getting early treatment for sickness or injuries, just increasing the cost when they show up at the hospital in an emergency.

On the other hand, some legislators are vying to propose the most extreme measure.   Arizona's Republican Representative Russell Pearce has proposed denying even marriage licenses and the right to rent an apartment to undocumented immigrants, while Nebraska's Tom White is pushing for a bill to recover the costs for public education, health care and any other public program used by an undocumented immigrant or their families.

Utah and South Carolina have both been debating resolutions by the states demanding that the federal government better reimburse state costs for immigrant benefits, an area where state leaders could find consensus.  US Representative Gabrielle Giffords is leading an effort by 41 members of Congress from 18 states to get full federal funding for program that reimburses states and localities for arrest, incarceration and transportation costs associated with illegal immigrants who commit crimes. 

Public Safety

Even as proposals proliferate to have local police enforce federal immigration law, many legislators and advocates are rejecting the approach. 

  • In Iowa, the Senate's top Democrat, Mike Gronstal, has rejected a plan by GOP Senators to have state and local law enforcement train with federal immigration authorities, saying immigration is a federal responsibility and the state needs to keep its police focused on local crimes like meth distribution.
  • In California, a rash of violent attacks against day laborers -- who often carry cash -- has emphasized both the racial profiling of immigrants as crime victims and the reluctance of many immigrants often to report crimes out of fear of deportation.
  • In Arizona, immigrant rights groups are building a racial profiling case against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has been targetting patrols in neighborhoods with high levels of undocumented immigration.

Six Alabama cities are using laws that impound cars driven by unlicensed motorists, laws aimed at intimidating undocumented immigrants according to critics.  On the other hand, the Anchorage, Alaska city assembly rejected a proposal to have police check motorists' citizenship during traffic stops and arrests.

Drivers Licenses:  An estimated 5000 immigrants, immigrant rights advocates and supporters gathered at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem to protest Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski’s executive order to deny driver’s licenses to anyone unable to prove Oregon residency and produce a Social Security number.  Following the rally, about 50 people testified in support of access to driver's licenses, but the House Transportation Committee voted in favor of introducing a bill to deny licenses to undocumented immigrants.  Still, the new Oregon business-led Essential Worker Immigration Coalition is campaigning against the bill, arguing that denying licenses could lead to loss of thousands of needed workers in the state.

On Monday February 4th, when Oregon Gov. Kulongoski's new driver's license requirements go into effect, there will only be five states left that will still grant undocumented immigrants a driver's license. They are: Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, Utah and Washington. Michigan's sudden announcement stopping all licenses not only for undocumented but also legal non-permanent residents left nearly 400,000 foreign businesspeople, students and their families with no access to legal driving identification.  However,  the Michigan Senate Transportation Committee has approved bills that would remedy this restriction for legal immigrants and sent them to the full Senate for approval.

In Utah, the Republican-controlled House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee passed a bill along party lines that would revoke the state's privilege card that allows undocumented immigrants to register and insure their motor vehicles.  If the law establishing the card is repealed, Utah will lose almost $1 million a year in revenue from the driving card.

New rules have created a massive burden on both citizens and legal residents.  In Oklahoma, their anti-immigrant law, HB 1804, has been "wreaking havoc on law-abiding citizens," created headaches of paperwork and delays for those applying for a new license or renewing an expired one. In Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution argued that a proposed drivers license bill would deny drivers licenses to legal immigrants with poor written English skills, denying them jobs and throwing them onto welfare rolls.  And in North Carolina, used car dealers are reporting a drop in sales as the state has cracked down on driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, just part of lost income for many businesses.

Given this reality, the National Immigration Law Center's recent fact sheet release couldn't be better timed: Why Denying Driver’s Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants Harms Public Safety and Makes Our Communities Less Secure.

Allies on the Editorial Page

While many immigrant advocates can lodge just complaints against the media for their coverage on immigration policy, some newspaper editorial boards are getting it right (or at least better). 

State Immigration Review


Elections Proving Anti-Immigrant Politics is Losing Issue

Immigration has been the issue that many on the Right-- especially panderers to anti-immigrant forces like Mitt Romney -- thought would define the 2008 elections.  Instead, the main Republican author of national comprehensive immigration reform, John McCain, has emerged as the likely GOP nominee -- and there is some justice that it was Republican Latinos who gave McCain his margin of victory in the key Florida primary.  GOP Latino voters gave McCain 54% their voters to just 14% for Romney.  Since Latinos made up 12% of the GOP primary voters, doing the math, that added up almost exactly to the overall 5% McCain margin of victory in Florida.

The remaining two Democrat candidates are now vying hard for Latino and voters from other immigrant communities over support for both comprehensive federal legislation and opposition to misguided state anti-immigrant policies, including Sen. Obama strongly defending state policies granting drivers licenses to undocumented residents.

The importance of voters from immigrant communities and the broader failure of anti-immigrant politics is part of a trend Progressive States has highlighted, including progressive gains in both 2006 and 2007 elections and defeat of anti-immigrant campaigners despite rhetoric that immigration would be a trump card for conservative politicians.

Rising Immigrant Voting Population:  The importance of immigrant voters is only going to rise in coming years.  As we detailed in the last SIP Update, new citizenship applications doubled in 2007 from a year before to 1.4 million new applicants, with support from groups like Ya es hora - Ciudadania - "Citizenship, it's time!" - which are registering new citizens to vote.  As Pramila Jayapal of Hate Free Zone Washington argued in the Seattle Times recently, integration of new immigrants, not attacking them, is the road to political success:

While some extremists continue their losing campaign to convince voters that tough talking on immigration will gain votes, serious politicians at the state level can focus on real work that recognizes that integrating immigrants is one of the state's top economic development strategies.

California, which in many ways anticipated anti-immigrant attacks locally back in the early 1990s, has replaced all of those anti-immigrant state leaders since then, most prominently with immigrant governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has condemned anti-immigrant politics, reflecting a state where 83 percent of all voters favor some form of legalization of undocumented residents. 

While some politicians may still try to score short-term political points this year, they are dooming themselves to future political relevance.   All of those 1.4 million new citizenship applicants last year won't translate into new voters this year because of backlogs in processing them by the federal government -- a backlog many see as deliberate -- but that is just delaying the inevitable surge in new voting power by immigrant communities in states across the country in coming years.

New Allies in Challenging Anti-Immigrant Laws

We are increasingly seeing the backlash against the anti-immigrant backlash as new allies and coalitions join in promoting humane immigration policy and rejecting the many anti-immigrant policies being promoted in the states.

Legislators Taking Leadership:  As we detail below, legislators in states across the country are stepping up in opposition to various anti-immigrant proposals, but Maryland lawmakers have taken it a step further and formed a New Americans Caucus to challenge the national anti-immigration mood in state legislatures.

Churches Welcoming "Strangers":  Church leaders are taking increasing leadership in standing up for immigrant rights. 

  • The just completed "New Baptist Covenant" gathering of representatives from Baptist denominations representing 20 million Americans, held a “Welcoming a Stranger” session on how churches can support new immigrants in their communities.
  • Catholic Church leaders across the country have condemned proposed anti-immigrant state laws, from Indiana to Missouri to Kentucky to Kansas to Utah. Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, the new chairman of the U.S. bishops' migration committee, condemns "shock jock" lies about immigrants and calls for legalization for all undocumented immigrants that pay a fine and back taxes.
  • Leaders of the The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, which actively welcomes undocumented immigrants to their congregations, have met with Utah legislative leaders and told them to treat undocumented immigrants as "human beings" in any legislation.
  • Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform includes leaders from Evangelicals for Social Action, the Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, and Sojourners/Call to Renewal among many others.

Other key religious allies include:

Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), Church World Service (CWS), Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society , Luther Immigration & Refugee Services (LIRS), Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

Business Community Highlights the Economic Costs of Misguided Policies:  If Church leaders are emphasizing the inhumanity of many anti-immigrant proposals, new business coalitions are stressing their economic costs.  Restaurants, nurseries and other Oregon employers have formed the Oregon Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, just as Indiana state and city chambers of commerces and manufacturers have joined arms with Latino and church activists to oppose a proposed anti-immigrant Indiana bill.

Oklahoma's business leaders have not only criticized that state's draconian anti-immigration law, but are telling other states not to follow that example.  "Be very, very cautious before going into this minefield," Mike Seney, an Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce official, told a Kansas newspaper. "There is a reason for a federal preemption on this."

The national Essential Worker Immigration Coalition has a number of resources tracking state legislation and reports on the economic costs to state economies from anti-immigrant laws.

Taking on the International Causes of Immigration to the United States

Often lost in the debate on immigration are policies to deal with the economic and social problems in foreign countries driving people to the United States in the first place.

Advocates and legislators are increasingly arguing for solutions that deal with those core problems, not scapegoating of immigrants themselves.  The Missouri Catholic Bishops in a letter to state legislators argued for compassion for people migrating to another country "when faced with circumstances such as persecution, drought, famine or pervasive poverty” in their home countries.  At a rally in Rhode Island,  Gladys Gould of the Providence Presbyterian Church identified the "global economy...and free trade agreements like NAFTA" are hurting workers' wages on both sides of the border and leading to current conflicts over immigration.

In Oklahoma, state Representative Rebecca Hamilton, has filed HB 3067 to address some of those roots causes of immigration.  Rep. Hamilton's bill which would repeal portions of last year's anti-immigration law and instead make it illegal for the state of Oklahoma to contract with any company that has closed American facilities and opened new factories outside the country unless they operate those factories in compliance with United States wage, safety and human rights guarantees. Citing US Department of Labor statistics, the legislation notes that wages in both Mexico and the United States have fallen since the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  As Rep. Hamilton argues:

Illegal immigration is in large part a direct result of the failure of United States corporations operating south of the border to be good corporate citizens in those countries. Legislation that tries only to punish people and pit one group of low-income workers against another doesn't help the problem.

This is in line with efforts by state and local governments across the country to adopt Sweatfree Government Purchasing rules. Governors from the states of Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have signed onto calls for a Sweatfree Consortium and advocates are publicizing a Model Sweatfree Procurement Policy to help raise wage standards both at home and abroad-- a critical tool for easing the economic suffering driving people to immigrate to the US in the first place.

Dobbs and FAIR Admit Undocumented Immigrants do Pay Taxes

Lou Dobbs and FAIR swung into action early this week, calling on their fans and members to contact Congress to make sure undocumented immigrants wouldn't receive a tax rebate under the federal economic stimulus package sailing through the House and Senate. 

Since the rebates were only going to Americans who paid taxes last year, they were admitting that undocumented immigrants pay taxes; In fact, the Internal Revenue Service has determined that undocumented immigrants paid almost $50 billion in federal taxes from 1996 to 2003, and according to the Social Security Administration, undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $8.5 billion in Social Security and Medicare funds each year.

What Part of Legal Don't They Understand?  Unfortunately, the bill is being rewritten to bar individuals using tax-payer identification number (ITIN) instead of a social security number from receiving rebates, which will stop many legal immigrants from receiving rebates as well, one more example of how attacks on undocumented immigrants inevitably seem to become attacks on all immigrants, including legal ones.

Some who should pay taxes, haven't:  In a bit of justice, Oklahoma House Speaker Lance Cargill was forced to resign this week following published reports that he submitted late property tax payments and failed to file state personal income tax returns. A proud proponent of that state's anti-immigrant law, Cargill's had ironically supported the law because, "Illegal immigration is a hidden tax on hardworking families in this state. It’s costing us hundreds of millions of dollars a year." 

Research & Polling Highlights


Research & Polling

The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) released several essential fact sheets that are must reads:

The Immigration Policy Center, too, issued a slew of helpful research and fact sheets:

The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF)'s Thinking Ahead About Our Immigrant Future: New trends and Mutual Benefits in our Aging Society, argues that immigration has not only begun to level off, but immigrants are climbing the socio-economic ladder, and will become increasingly important to the U.S. economy as workers, taxpayers, and home-buyers supporting the aging Baby Boom generation.
The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) released Over-Raided, Under Siege: U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Immigrants, a new report detailing over 100 stories of human rights abuses against immigrants during 2006 - 2007, including those arising from 206 immigration raids.
The executive summary of Over-Raided, Under Siege is available online, as well as NNIRR's chronology immigration raids.

Lastly, a new poll by the Arizona State University found that residents in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Mexico had an overall positive assessment of the impact of immigration, with 38% of respondents saying that immigrants from other countries “helped their state more than they hurt it,” and another 34% reporting that immigrants “helped and hurt their state about the same amount.”  Other interesting findings:

  • 83% of the survey's respondents also said that undocumented immigrants who serve in the military should earn citizenship.
  • 79% agree that children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from high school and are not involved in crime should become eligible for legal residency.
  • 71% agree that undocumented immigrants who attend public colleges and universities should be able to pay in-state tuition rates if they grew up and graduated from a high school in the state.

Masthead

The State Immigration Project Update is written and edited by:

Nathan Newman, Policy Director
Marisol Thomer, Outreach Coordinator
John Bacino, Operations Manager


Are there state immigration developments in your state?  Do you know about new immigration research?  Let us know by emailing us at immigration@progressivestates.org.

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