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State GOP puts immigration on front burner
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So far this legislative session, there’s been talk about building toll roads and taking money from the “Rainy Day” fund. Managing population growth. Children’s health care.
Even a proposal to make it against the law to send text messages while driving. But one issue has been markedly downplayed: illegal immigration.
That’s about to change. Republican lawmakers plan to renew their efforts this week to clamp down on businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers, invest in technology that would increase security along the border and give police agencies more money to enforce immigration laws.
Rep. Russell Pearce, R- Mesa, who has become one of the state’s leading advocates for immigration reform, said his focus remains on passing laws that penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
“Disneyland learned a long time ago, when you shut down the rides, the people want to go home,” Pearce said.
House Republicans have made the immigration-related measures part of their official agenda for the 2007 session, following up on a year in which the GOP pushed through a series of immigration bills only to see them fall under Gov. Janet Napolitano’s veto axe.
Voters later approved four ballot measures that dealt with illegal immigration — two of which had been vetoed by the governor.
Republicans also plan to push hard for new school construction, increased funding for prisons and speeding up state road and highway construction.
Many of those issues, transportation funding in particular, have dominated the early maneuvering as the session gears up.
Gov. Napolitano has set out to tackle growth and infrastructure needs as the state continues to attract record numbers of new residents every year.
She has proposed refinancing the state’s debt for transportation projects, which would free up hundreds of millions of dollars for new roads.
Immigration doesn’t top her to-do list this year.
In her budget proposal, which was unveiled last week, Napolitano’s immigration plan revolved around giving $5 million to police departments in order to crack down on vehicle thefts near the border.
That’s down significantly from last year, when she proposed $100 million to shore up the state’s 370-mile border with Mexico.
“I don’t think that it’s wise to do the same,” Napolitano said last week.
She said the federal government has stepped up and added more troops along the border.
Chuck Coughlin, a Republican political strategist, said the state has done nearly everything it can to stem the flow of illegal immigration.
He said, it’s now up to the federal government to do something.
“I think that shows there’s a lot of (public) frustration,” said Coughlin, whose firm worked on the successful ballot initiative to make English the official language of Arizona.
He said Congress will have a significant impact on what the Legislature does this year. Simply put, he believes the less Washington does to address immigration the more states will have to step in.
Last week, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives started working to revamp immigration rules that would grant legal residency to roughly 1.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country.
Still, some Arizona Democrats believe the pressure is on the Republican majority in the Legislature to pass an employer sanctions bill to show the party wasn’t using the issue to win votes during an election year.
Bob Grossfeld, a longtime Democratic political strategist, called it a “litmus test” for Republicans.
“The reality is that we don’t have one immigration problem. We have many immigration problems that can’t be solved with election-year slogans,” he said.
Proposals to penalize employers for hiring illegal immigrants will be a hard sell for some lawmakers and the Arizona business community, who argue that there’s no reliable way to verify a person’s residency.
Pearce and some of his colleagues believe the state can eliminate the incentive to cross the border illegally if it can stop businesses from hiring undocumented workers.
Pearce said if the measure fails again, he might just take his proposal to the voters in 2008, when he believes it could pass easily based on voters’ overwhelming approval of the four immigration measures last November.
On the other side of the political spectrum, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, is introducing a bill that stops prosecutors from issuing charges of human smuggling on illegal immigrants who are brought into the country.
Sinema said the measure aims to keep Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas from using Arizona’s human-trafficking laws to arrest and prosecute those being smuggled into the country.
Sinema said those laws were not meant to be used that way. And in some cases, particularly in regard to sex trafficking, Sinema said those being brought into the country are victims.
“We shouldn’t victimize these people a second time,” she said.
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