In November, Progressive States Network launched our State Immigration Project
to support efforts by legislators and advocates to challenge
anti-immigrant policies and promote smarter, humane policy that would
address the concerns of voters.

We published our State Immigration Project: Policy Options for 2008in December (see the HTML version
with links to resources) to outline smart policies states have been
adopting to better integrate new immigrants into their communities, as
an alternative to the scapegoating of immigrants adopted in some
states. We have continued to update interested allies with our biweekly


State Immigration Project Updatewith ongoing analysis of state developments related to immigration policy (email immigration@progressivestates.org to signup).

This

Dispatch is a chance to outline current political
developments and summarize some key proposals being promoted by
progressive legislators, as well as problems with the negative policies
being adopted by some states. The

Dispatch starts by profiling
how Minnesota legislative leaders responded to anti-immigrant proposals
by their governor — a model for other states. It then outlines the
broad range of alternative policies that can address the underlying
concerns of voters, from cracking down on low-wage employers, better
integrating new immigrants, messaging the preventive care advantages of
benefits for immigrant families, highlighting how outreach in immigrant
communities promotes public safety, and how state leaders can take on
some of the root international causes of immigration. We then emphasize
that, in the context of both current presidential primaries and recent
state elections, anti-immigrant politics has not been a winning issue
at the polls and that rising citizenship campaigns and voting in
immigrant communities will doom anti-immigrant politicians in the
future. Lastly, we highlight new immigration policy resources available
to state policymakers.

Minnesota– A Model State Response to Anti-Immigrant Proposals

If one wants a model example of how to respond to anti-immigrant
policy announcements, there are good lessons to be learned from
Minnesota. Last month legislators and advocates responded to Minnesota
Governor Tim Pawlenty’s announcement of a slew of executive actions and
legislative proposals to “counter illegal immigration” through local enforcement of federal immigration laws and barring state contractors who
don’t use the E-Verify system to screen employees. Lawmakers and
advocates emphasized the political cynicism of the proposals, the
likely budget costs, and the likely damage to public safety:

  • A Political Play by Pawlenty: As soon as the proposals were announced, State Senator Patricia Torres Ray noted that “this is the same proposal from two years ago and once again it’s an election year,”
    highlighting the political cynicism of those manipulating the
    immigration issue. Javier Morillo-Alicea, president of SEIU Local 26,
    stated that “this has everything to do with the presidential race ,” since Pawlenty may be angling for a slot as Vice-Presidential nominee. Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller echoed Morillo’s conjecture saying, “Perhaps the governor is sharpening his message for the national stage.”
  • The Budget Cost:
    Sen. Leo Foley, a member of the Senate Public Safety Budget Committee,
    highlighted the financial costs of states trying to shoulder
    enforcement costs that should be handled by the federal government: “What it’s going to do is bring down the Minnesota treasury.”
  • Undermining Public Safety:
    Robin Phillips, executive director of Minnesota Advocates for Human
    Rights, highlighted the likely damage to public safety found the
    Governor’s plan: “The governor’s actions stand to damage community
    policing efforts, create significant fear in immigrant communities, and
    prevent victims from coming forward.” Phillips also noted that
    representatives from the Sheriff’s Association; the Police and Peace
    Officers Association; labor, business, immigrant  and groups;
    faith-based organizations; human rights advocates; and community
    organizations all testified against similar proposed legislation in
    2006.

Even the

Minnesota Chicano Latino Affairs Council (CLAC) — 11 of whose 15 members where appointed by the governor — issued a statement sharply at odds with Pawlenty’s proposals. Pawlenty himself acknowledged that,
aside from his unilateral executive orders, only the less controversial
measures, like strengthening human trafficking laws and tougher
penalties for identity theft, would likely move in the legislature. 

While some progressive legislators are giving
into the hysteria of anti-immigrant campaigners, Minnesota leaders,
like many of the other legislators and advocates detailed below, have
found both messaging and proposals that can unite all their state
populations, rather than divide them through scapegoating vulnerable
immigrant populations.

Wage Enforcement as Immigration Policy

Given the justifiable concern by voters about
illegal sweatshops, a number of state leaders are looking beyond the
issue of punishing immigrant workers to concentrating on raising wages
for all workers– and increasing penalties for wage law violators
across the board. (See Wage Enforcement as Immigration Policy for what legislators did in 2007 and earlier in this area).

Wage Enforcement vs. Employer Sanctions:  Instead of
promoting a narrow tactic like sanctions against employers of
undocumented workers, which only drives the problem of low-wage
employment underground,

New York State has created a new Bureau of Immigrant Workers’ Rights which has already moved forward in cracking down on low-wage law violators,
sending a van out to churches and community groups to encourage
immigrant workers to come forward to report wage law violations — an
important lesson that outreach, not pushing immigrants into the
shadows, is the key to raising wage standards for all.

Virginia Delegate Dwight Jones has introduced HB 1038 which
would enhance enforcement of the state minimum wage law. Other states
are considering proposals to significantly increase penalties for
violating minimum wage and other workplace standards.

Unfortunately, other states are still pursuing the narrow and often
self-defeating approach 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, with Indiana Sen. Tim Lanane questioning
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.” In considering the

Kentucky bill, House Judiciary Chairwoman Kathy Stein expressed doubt about even holding a vote given that the bill 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. “We are
literally shutting down immigration, and as we shut down immigration,
we shut down the economy,” says Joe Sigg,
director of government relations for the Arizona Farm Bureau, a
statewide coalition of farmers and ranchers. A housing market already
damaged by the subprime mortgage mess is being further undermined as
immigrant renters have lost their jobs and handed their keys back to landlords. Similiarly, 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.”

Immigrant Integration Policies

A number of states are moving forward with programs to better integrate existing immigrants into their communities (See Immigrant Integration and Naturalization for what legislators did in 2007 and earlier in this policy area):

  • Virginia’sHB 1174 which would establish an Office of Immigrant Assistance to aid legal immigrants in moving along the path to citizenship, while HB 419 / HB 437 would help ease financial pressure on schools with expanded needs for english language instruction.
  • Massachusett‘s Governor Deval Patrick is pushing for approval of in-state tuition at state colleges and universities for all immigrant residents via approval by the 11-member Board of Higher Education.
  • In

    Texas, education officials revised rules this month that had prevented some veterans who are immigrants from receiving college tuition exemptions.

  • 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. 

    • In

    Wisconsin, a social justice group,
    Empowerment, Solidarity, Truth, Hope, Equality and Reform of Fox Valley
    Interfaith Organizing Group, commonly called ESTHER, is working through the local Catholic Church to expand immigrant language couses and help for naturalization efforts.

  • 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.
  • And a push in

    Virginia to deny undocumented immigrants in-state tuition has stalled in the state Senate.

On the other hand, many school officials in Arizona have noted the drop in school attendance by
many immigrant children, as their families fear letting them even leave
home to go to school due to the anti-immigrant atmosphere in that
state.

Immigrant Benefits Policies

While some states are proposing bills to cut-off public services to
identified undocumented immigrants, there are many states that are
resisting these attacks and even moving forward with promoting
preventive services for new immigrants. (See Immigrants and Public Benefits for what legislators did in 2007 and earlier in this policy area). 

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,
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. While broad-based health
care reform approved in the

California House stalled in the state Senate, there was consensus
that providing care to all Californians, regardless of immigration
status, was not only the humane thing to do, but would ultimately save
money in the long-term for the state.

On the other hand, some legislators in states are vying to propose the most extreme anti-immigrant measures.

Arizona Republican Representative Russell Pearce has proposed denying even marriage licenses and the right to rent an apartment to undocumented immigrants, while

Nebraska’s Sen. 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. U.S. 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.


Immigration Outreach for Public Safety

Even as some states seek to enlist local law enforcement in
enforcing federal immigration law, initiatives are moving forward to
protect public safety through outreach and community policing in
immigrant communities. (See Immigrant Outreach as Public Safety and Anti-Terror Policy for what legislators did in 2007 and earlier in this policy area). 

To encourage cooperation with the police,

Virginia’sHB 307 shields crime victims and witnesses from immigration inquiries.

New York Sen. Jose Serrano also introduced a measure, S 6738, to make
it the policy of all New York State employees to keep immigration
status confidential when providing essential services for law-abiding
people. Sen. Serrano noted public safety was the primary reason he was introducing the bill, stating that, “It
is simply unacceptable that so many crimes against undocumented
immigrants go unreported because they are afraid to come forward to the
police. This bill will go a long way in ensuring that all people within
the state of New York are able to feel safe and secure.”

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.

The Danger of Racial Profiling:

Hubert Williams, head of the research organization Police Foundation, has highlighted the dangers of racial profiling when local agencies bear the responsibility for immigration enforcement.  Since Alabama state troopers began training with federal ICE agents, immigrant advocates have noted that immigrants are now more hesitant to talk to police when they are victimes of crime, making them easier prey for criminals who know their crimes won’t get reported to the police. 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 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. 

Unfortunately, after Michigan made
a sudden announcement this month stopping all licenses not only for
undocumented but also legal non-permanent residents, only Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico,  Utah and Washington still issue licenses to undocumented immigrants, and 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.

New drivers license 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.

Taking on the International Causes of Immigration

 

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 core problems of bad
trade deals lowering wages and poverty in other countries, not just
scapegoating immigrants themselves. As Gladys Gould of the Providence
Presbyterian Church said at a Rhode Island
rally, 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
U.S. 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. Hamiliton
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.


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.  Even as some
politicians are ramping up the rhetoric against undocumented
immigrants, the reality is that they will be facing an unprecedented number of new legal immigrants voters this year,
as new citizenship applications nearly doubled from 731,000 in fiscal
year 2006 to 1.4 million in 2007.  In July and August 2007 alone,
federal immigration officials received more than 500,000 applications
for naturalization — three times what it normally receives in a
two-month period.

Some credit the rocketing number of applications
to a rush to avoid the fee increase (from $400 to $675) that took place
at the end of July 2007.  Others say the rise in anti-immigrant
sentiment and laws encourage new-comers to file.  But no doubt much of
the credit must be handed to the massive citizenship drive “Ya es hora – Ciudadania ”
– “Citizenship, it’s time!” – launched by immigrant rights groups and
Spanish-language media. The Ya es Hora campaign recently announced that it surpassed its goal of mobilizing more than one million eligible immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship in 2007.

A Federal Roadblock on New Citizens: There is one problem — the federal government isn’t keeping up. USCIS recently that those who applied for citizenship after June 1, 2007 may have to wait 16 to 18 months for
their applications to be processed.  The average processing time before
the surge in applications was six to seven months.  Beyond more than
doubling the wait time, the processing backlog means hundreds of
thousands of would-be new citizens won’t be eligible to vote in
November’s presidential elections — and that has many crying foul. Of
course, USCIS has denied that the delays are political. 

Under pressure, USCIS has pledged to hire 1,500 new employees to address the workload and hire back about 700 retired government employees. Some offices have extended hours or opened Saturdays to
try to catch up.  But USCIS Director Emilio T. Gonzalez said in a House
subcommittee hearing on Thursday that this response plan won’t reduce
processing times to six months until the third quarter of Fiscal 2010— not in time for the 2008 elections for many applicants.

The Failure of Anti-Immigrant Politics:
Still, these backlogs are just delaying some of the inevitable surge in
new voting power by immigrant communities in states across the country
in coming years, since Latino voters alone are expected to reach 14 million this year,
double the number from 2000.  And while a few hot-button anti-immigrant
issues get approval in some polls, the underlying reality is that the
American people have been steady in their support for legalization of
existing undocumented immigrants, with a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll
from the end of November 2007 shows that 63% of Democrats, 64% of
Republicans and 57% of independents favor allowing undocumented
immigrants who meet certain conditions — registering, being
fingerprinted, paying a fine and learning English — to become
citizens, and a new poll by Arizona State University found that 79% of residents in
Arizona,
Nevada,
Texas and
New Mexico
agreed that children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from high
school and are not involved in crime should become eligible for legal
residency.

Given this reality of rising immigrant voting and
a public that ultimately wants a humane solution to the immigration
issue, promoting smart and humane immigration policies is not only the
right thing to do, its’s the politically savvy strategy.

Additional Studies and Resources

Conservative think-tank
America’s Majority Foundation, in a new study titled Immigration and the Wealth of States,
finds that states with high numbers of immigrants have lower rates of
unemployment, individual poverty and total crime than other states. In
fact, the median per capita income — the earnings of the ‘man in the
middle’ — is $3,469 greater in the 19 high immigration jurisdictions
than in the 32 other states. As for crime, in 2006, the total crime
rate per 100,000 residents was lower in the high immigration
jurisdictions than in the 32 other states.

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 homebuyers
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.

Requiring employers to check employee citizenship status through
E-Verify, the federal online database, isn’t the solution some
lawmakers imagine it is. In a July 2007 report , the
Government Accountability Office (GAO)
estimates the price tag of making E-Verify mandatory (and thereby
substantially increasing the number of employers using it) would be $70
million annually for program management plus an additional $300 to $400
million annually for compliance activities and staff. All that money
and the GAO warns that the system can’t even fully address fraud issues
– for example,  when employees present borrowed or stolen genuine
documents or when employers try to subvert the system by entering the
same identity information to authorize multiple workers.

Originally published in Bender’s Immigration Bulletin in 2005, we
thought it important to dust off a report by West Point law professor
Margaret Stock’s report on Driver Licenses and National Security .
In that report Stock thoroughly expounds on why the denial of licenses
to undocumented immigrants is a policy prescription that hampers law
enforcement far more than it enhances it.

For more information on the myriad of state immigration legislation passed in 2007, see: