State Immigration Project Update

April 25th, 2008

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State Immigration Project Update

Young Elected Officials National Convening

On April 23rd, Progressive States Network's Policy Director, Nathan Newman, was part of a training session at the nation's largest gathering of young progressive elected leaders on immigration policy at the state and local level.  He emphasized the positive policy programs related to new immigrants legislators have been promoting across the country and the messaging and strategies used to defeat or water down many of the anti-immigrant bills proposed this year.  He was joined by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who pioneered progressive local identification policies and other immigrant inclusion programs, and Jorge Mursuli of Democracia USA.

State Immigration Review

Tough Wage Enforcement Law Approved in Iowa Senate; Anti-Immigrant Measures Rejected

The Iowa Senate last week approved SF 2416, a bill to sharply increase fines on employers violating Iowa state wage laws, crack down on the practice of misclassifying employees as "independent contractors" to evade those laws, and protect workers reporting violations from retaliation.  This bill was positioned by Iowa Senate leaders as their response to bad immigration proposals in the House and was approved even as the Senate rejected attempts by conservative lawmakers to attach anti-immigrant provisions to the bill. 

As Iowa Senate Assistant Majority Leader Joe Bolkcom, the main sponsor of the Iowa bill, wrote in an editorial published in the Des Moines Register, such an approach is the real solution to the problem of the underground economy, not punitive attacks on undocumented workers:

As families in Iowa struggle to make ends meet, they are justified in feeling threatened when they see what were once good jobs turned into low-wage, sweatshop labor...  If Iowa were to ensure that all employers paid a decent wage, the attraction of hiring undocumented immigrants would diminish tremendously.  Any hiring of undocumented immigrants would then be due to legitimate shortages in the labor supply, not to employers using those workers to illegally undermine wage standards for the rest of the work force.

The Iowa Senate approach contrasts sharply with the punitive approach against immigrants embodied in a competing House proposal, HF 2686 (formerly HF 2610), approved by the Iowa House this week, which would create new state ID requirements for new hires and "employee theft" provisions that would criminalize many immigrant workers.  Republicans predicted the proposal would soon die in the Senate, calling it a Democratic ploy to look tough on immigration during an election year.  As the Republican House Minority Leader Christopher Rants said, "We're passing a political document today against illegal immigration, but you don't need to worry that this will ever become law or reach the governor's desk."

Anti-Immigrant Bills Stall; Wage Enforcement Seen as Better Solution

In passing SF 2416, the Iowa Senate followed the increasing trend of states rejecting punitive measures against immigrants in favor of working to enforce higher wage standards for all workers, citizen and immigrant alike. Despite the media focus on a handful of states passing anti-immigrant measures, the unreported story has been the increasing crackdown by state governments on wage law violators as a response to the growing underground economy.  A few examples include:

  • The Arizona and Ohio minimum wage ballot initiatives passed by voters in 2006 included new triple damages against employers violating their state wage laws.  Just this week, Massachusettsmade it the law that triple damages will be mandatory for violations of that state's wage law.
  • In 2007, Minnesota and Colorado both enacted new laws cracking down on misclassification of employees as "independent contractors" to evade state wage laws.
  • In New York, a new state joint task force of state labor, tax and worker compensation agencies conducted a dramatic sweep this year of 117 employers, finding 646 workers were owed minimum wage and overtime pay totaling $3 million.  Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick created a similar task force earlier this month via Executive Order.
  • Illinois, along with a number of other states, has mandated a state study commission to collect data and information on lost tax revenues due to independent contractor abuses.
  • In Connecticut in 2007, a bill was introduced that would have made it a criminal offense to hire undocumented workers, but instead it was modified into a state law to go after all employers who commit workers' compensation premium fraud to cheat workers out of benefits.

In 2008, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin all introduced new laws to crack down on wage law violators and on employers misclassifying employees as independent contractors to evade those laws.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley recently spoke out against the mistreatment of immigrant workers in the poultry industry that's been covered by the Charlotte Observerin a series about the poultry industry, saying he'll make sure state regulators have the resources and authority to combat it.  Hopefully, Gov. Easley and the North Carolina legislature, once it begins session next month, will take steps to raise penalties against employers who broke workplace safety laws.  According to the AFL-CIO's 2008 report Death on the Job, North Carolina's average fines for a serious violation of the OSHA Act were 50% less than the national average ($433 compared to $909).

One reason for this trend towards wage enforcement is that state governments lose billions of dollars in revenue each year due to the failure to enforce state wage laws.   Instead of wasting state money on costly, wasteful local enforcement of immigration laws, stepped up wage law enforcement will more than pay for itself

Local Law Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws Questioned

Prince William County, Virginia gained notoriety for enacting a policy that directing local police officers to check the residency status of crime suspects, even those detained for traffic offenses, if officers think they might be in the country illegally.  After merely a month of the policy being in effect, County Supervisor Frank Principi is calling for the County to repeal that provision and will introduce a resolution to that effect next week.  This followed the Board of County Supervisors' unanimous decision this week to cut $3.1 million from its 2009 budget for enforcement of the policy, which included funding for video cameras in patrol cars that police requested to protect officers from accusations of racial profiling.  "If we turn off the budget spigot, we'll need to revisit the policy as well," Principi said. 

The call for a repeal comes at a time when other nearby Virginia and Maryland counties are feeling the consequences of Prince William's policies.  Law enforcement leaders there have told The Washington Post that they fear local enforcement of immigration laws intimidate witnesses and victims.  Montgomery County, Maryland's police chief even starred in public-service announcements with a Latino soccer player telling citizens, saying "Don't be afraid to call police!," to combat the immigrant fears.

Prince William's own police chief Charlie Deane warned the Board last year that this policy could have "a potential chilling effect" on immigrants coming forward to report crimes and give essential witness testimony.  Chief Deane's tried to counteract the harmful policy by speaking with community groups and engaging with Spanish-language media to get the word out that victims and witnesses will be protected regardless of their residency status.  "It's complicated and difficult,"he said, "but the benefits to public safety far outweigh the drawbacks... Not all illegal immigrants come here just to work."

Immigration News in the States

Immigration News in the States

Despite the whole buildup by Lou Dobbs and anti-immigrant groups that states this year were going to pass a raft of bills cracking down on undocuments immigrants, the reality has been quite different.  With many states having finished or well into their legislative sessions, the story on immigration in the states is one of a few bad bills passed, a lot of bad bills defeated and a few positive programs moving forward. With more progressive groups, labor advocates and business groups weighing in on how misguided these anti-immigrant bills really were, many legislators poised to support anti-immigrant policies thought better and defeated most of the bad policies proposed.

Most states have rejected anti-immigrant bills filed, while a number of states where bills initially moved forward defeated or stalled them in the end:

Even many bills that passed were often limited or qualified in various ways:

  • Utah's Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. signed anti-immigrant bill SB 81 into law.  Provisions that would have ended Utah's access to in-state tuition rates were stripped from the bill before passage.  The remaining provisions of the bill -- allowing local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration laws, forbidding localities from engaging in "sanctuary" policies, and requiring public employers and their contractors to verify the legal status of workers -- won't go into effect until July 2009 on the hope that the "immigration problem" will be solved by Congress and a new administration before SB 81 goes into effect.

  • In Mississippi, the legislature sent SB 2988, which would require companies to use E-Verify to check the citizenship status of their employees, to the Governor with felony sanctions against both employers and employees. While Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill, he noted that "the federal government itself has said E-Verify is not a reliable system" and emphasized that small employers are exempt until 2011.

  • In Virginia, the legislature rejected bills that would have denied undocumented students access to higher education (HB 14), punished citizens who assist undocumented immigrants in obtaining any "benefit, service, status, or privilege" (HB 45), established English as the state's official language (HB 55), and seized the vehicles of individuals driving without a license (HB 63, HB 178, HB 180, HB 433, HB 446, SB 515).  What did pass were companion bills, HB 820/SB 609, to require a check of citizenship on anyone taken into custody at a jail or correctional facility, a bill to suspend a business' right to operate in Virginia for at least a year if it is found to employ an undocumented worker (HB 926), and another to require all government contractors to state in a written contract that they won't employ an undocumented worker (HB 1298).
  • The Kansas House this year voted to gut an anti-immigrant bill and added provisions to severely punish employers exploiting undocumented immigrants by violating state wage laws and cracked down on misclassification of independent contractors.

On the driver's license issue, Oregon's legislature codified SB 1080, the Governor's Executive Order to make lawful presence a requirement for Oregon's driver's licenses.  Similarly, Idaho's Governor signed into law HB 366 which further restricts immigrants' access to driver's licenses by requiring licenses issued to legal immigrants to have expiration dates matching the expiration of their immigration documentation. But the Maryland legislature rejected proposals to prohibit licenses for undocumented immigrants in that state.

A number of positive immigration bills have also passed this session, including:

  • New Mexico's legislature approved the passage of a bill, SB 71, to criminalize human trafficking that extends state benefits to victims and creates a task force to further study the issue and make legislative recommendations.

  • At the end of February, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed an Executive Order creating a New Americans Policy Council that will promote strategies to help legal immigrants become naturalized and learn English language skills, as well as facilitate public-private partnerships to better integrate new Americans into the fabric of the state's society and economy.  The Washington state legislature took the additional step of providing $340,000 in funding to promote community economic development and build the capacity of organizations across the state that provide naturalization assistance to legal permanent residents.  This policy will  help integrate the estimated 135,000 legal permanent residents in the state eligible for citizenship and boost economic development through greater workforce and civic participation.

Anti-immigrant measures have been passed this session, including:

  • Georgia's SB 350 and HB 978, which would jail and impound the vehicles of anyone caught driving without a valid license.  Both bills are awaiting the Governor's signature.  It should be noted that 6 other anti-immigrant bills failed to make it pass the Georgia legislature's "crossover day".
  • Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri signed an executive order that requires state agencies and vendors to verify the legal status of all employees and directs Rhode Island state police and department of corrections to work with ICE to enforce federal immigration law. 

Research & Polling Highlights

Research & Polling Highlights

A research report released last month by the Julian Samora Research Institute of Michigan State University took on the subject of how current U.S. immigration policies undermine national security.  Enforcement Without Reform by Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center demonstrates how the U.S. has repeatedly attempted to reduce the influx of undocumented immigrants with enforcement measures with the same unsuccessful result.  Instead, Ewing argues that better national security relies on bringing U.S. immigration policy in line with economic realities and that no amount of enforcement can compensate for the fact that the U.S. immigration system is broken.

The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) recently updated their chart of measures that limit the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local authorities.  NILC also published a report on  How Errors in Basic Pilot/E-Verify Databases Impact U.S. Citizens and Lawfully Present Immigrants , warning that unless the deficiencies in the E-Verify program are addressed, any expansion of the program would threaten the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of citizens and work-authorized immigrants who may be either wrongfully fired or refused employment.

Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy released a report detailing the urgent need for the development and implementation of immigrant integration strategies and policies. Los Angeles on the Leading Edge: Immigrant Integration Indicators and their Policy Implications provides policymakers, foundations, and other stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels with a roadmap to major integration issues and solutions that will better leverage the talents of immigrants and their children. 

Anti-immigrant group Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) noted the all-time high number of failed immigration bills and chastised state legislatures that passed bills with constitutional flaws.

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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