The Immigration Debate

2 GOP delegates target illegal immigrants. Legislation is deemed xenophobic by opponents

By Michael Dresser
Sun Staff

At a time when President Bush and leaders of the state Republican Party are making aggressive efforts to reach out to immigrant populations, two GOP delegates are steering a different course. Baltimore County's Richard K. Impallaria and Patrick L. McDonough are drawing criticism for a legislative package they've introduced seeking to crack down on illegal immigrants in Maryland.

"We know we're going to be labeled," said McDonough. "We also know that 85 percent of the American people are in our corner."

Some of the labels opponents have used: xenophobic, politically opportunistic, cruel, rude.

But the lawmakers are unfazed and have chosen undocumented immigrants, for whom they insist on using the politically incorrect term "illegal aliens," as their signature issue in the second year of their terms.

Impallaria and McDonough are the lead sponsors of five of the six bills introduced in the House this year seeking to get tough on illegal immigration -- a topic seldom raised as a state issue until the last two years.

Along with fellow Republicans J. B. Jennings of Baltimore County and Herbert H. McMillan of Anne Arundel County, they are the leaders of a small band of lawmakers who see illegal immigration as a threat that needs to be addressed at both the state and federal levels.

The legislation they have introduced -- and more is to come -- is gaining them considerable attention. Much of the response has been highly critical, but the two seem to be reveling in the attention -- whether positive or negative.

The two say they have nothing against foreigners or immigration -- just those who enter the country illegally.

"They become a subculture that is continually ducking and dodging the law of the state of Maryland," said Impallaria.

Last week, he and McDonough held a news conference with the widow of a Baltimore County police sergeant who was killed in 2001 when his car collided with a vehicle driven by a drunken driver who was in the country illegally.

The lawmakers announced that they were naming their legislation forbidding people to lend their cars to illegal immigrants after Sgt. Mark F. Parry of Bel Air. The legislation would provide penalties for owners who do so knowingly, including confiscation of the vehicle and a year's suspension of driving privileges.

Other bills Impallaria and McDonough have sponsored would require local law enforcement officers to turn over any person they find in the country illegally to federal authorities. In addition to a statewide version of the legislation, they have introduced local bills that apply only to the counties they represent, Baltimore and Harford.

Another of their bills would forbid state and local governments to accept cards issued by foreign consulates as sole proof of identity. The two are also co-sponsors of McMillan's bill prohibiting the issuance of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Hispanic groups and advocates for immigrants are appalled by the flurry of bills targeting the undocumented.

Kevin Slayton, public policy director for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center, said the delegates' use of the term "illegal aliens" in the title of some of the bills was especially offensive.

"It's almost like name-calling," Slayton said. "It's rather cruel and rude. It sets the wrong tone for this session."

Kim Propeack, Annapolis lobbyist for the Hispanic group Casa of Maryland Inc., said the bills show a "clear xenophobia" on the part of their authors.

Propeack said the bills requiring law enforcement to turn over any illegal immigrants they find to federal authorities have been opposed by police because they get in the way of their crime-fighting mission.

"It would drive a stake through the heart of police relations with immigrant communities," she said. "People will not come forward as victims. They will not come forward as witnesses. They will not participate in criminal prosecutions."

Ricardo Flores, board president of the Maryland Latino Coalition for Justice, decried the bill that would forbid lending vehicles to illegal immigrants as harsh, unfair and harassing. He said the circumstances under which people lend their cars to undocumented workers include medical and family emergencies.

Flores said that when Republican legislators push such legislation, they undermine their party's efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters. "There are Latinos trying to make a decision about which party to support, and legislation like this obviously drives them to the Democratic Party," he said.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s press office declined to comment on the bills, saying he hadn't seen them.

But John M. Kane, Ehrlich's hand-picked state Republican chairman, distanced the party from the delegates' approach and praised Bush's recent initiative to make it easier for undocumented workers to legalize their immigration status.

"Rather than curse the darkness, we should light the candle, and the candle in this case is to lower the barriers to legal citizenship," he said.

McDonough, however, said Bush's plan will not work. "I don't want anyone to replace an American in a job," he said.

Impallaria and McDonough were both swept into office in 2002 as Ehrlich carried their district in a landslide.

Impallaria said his concerns about illegal immigration were stoked by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the role of Lee Boyd Malvo, who was in the country illegally, in the Washington-area sniper attacks.

The two delegates said their legislation was prompted in part by two bills last year seeking to make life easier for undocumented immigrants. One, making it easier for immigrants without papers to get driver's licenses, was amended to authorize a task force study; the other, letting undocumented students qualify for in-state tuition, was vetoed by Ehrlich.

McDonough said he is aware of the power of the issue because of his 13-year career as a radio talk-show host -- most recently on WCBM on Saturday nights. He classifies illegal immigration as a hot-button issue on a par with abortion.

Supporters of the bills are planning a rally in support of the legislation next month. McDonough said he expects to draw a big crowd with the help of talk radio.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

OP-ED COLUMNIST of the New York Times
Workers in the Shadows
By DAVID BROOKS

Imagine a person 10 times as determined as you are. Picture a guy who will wade across rivers, brave 120-degree boxcars and face vicious smugglers and murderous vigilantes — all to get a job picking fruit for 10 hours a day. That person is the illegal immigrant. Let's call him Sam. This whole immigration debate is about him, the choices he faces and the way he responds.

One thing we know about Sam: he will get here. Between 1986 and 1998, Congress increased the Border Patrol's budget sixfold. Over that time the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. doubled, to eight million. Getting across that border is Sam's shot at a decent future. Maybe his whole family depends upon him. He will not be herded away like a lamb.

At the moment, Sam lives in the shadows of society. But this week, President Bush proposed an immigration reform plan that would offer him a new set of choices.

Under the Bush plan, Sam could become a visible member of society with legal documentation. He could get a driver's license. He could benefit from worker protection laws, and possibly see his wages rise. He could open a bank account, which would let him ship money back home without having to pay huge fees. As Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute has shown, he would be much more likely to invest in himself through worker training.

More seriously, his stay in the U.S. would be limited. For up to six years, Sam would be legal, but at the end of that time, he would probably face deportation. Then what would his family do for money?

Sam might decide, all things considered, that it was better not to be in the Bush system, and to remain, as he is now, in the shadows. Or he might decide to enroll in the Bush system for a few years, then return to the shadows. If Sam is going to cooperate, if the U.S. is going to have the labor force it needs to prosper, if the cloud of gangsterism and exploitation is to be finally removed from the lives of immigrants, then Congress is going to have to take the Bush plan and add a component that addresses the immigrants' long-term dreams.

There are several ways to do this. Some have proposed a point system. Sam could earn a point every time he did something that would make him a better citizen. A point for learning English. A point for a high school equivalency degree. With enough points he could earn a green card. He would be on a rigorous path to citizenship, which would still be longer than the one legal immigrants would take.

The Bush plan also needs that long-term component to have any chance of passage in the Houseof Representatives. There are about 70 Republicans who will never vote for any immigration reform but prohibition. To get a majority, the administration has to take the rest of the Republicans and win over a big chunk of Democrats.

The Democrats' present position is that Sam has to get full legalization — which is politically impossible — or he gets nothing. This week, most Democrats, led by Howard Dean, dismissed the president's plan contemptuously.

But if Democrats were offered a reasonable way to regularize Sam's life and give him hope for the future, I can't believe that they would really be so hardhearted that they would turn that down.

Bush has moved the Republicans a long way on this issue, and he will probably have to move a little more. The Democrats haven't budged, but if they do, then we will finally be able to see Sam emerge into the sunlight, and we'll be able to take advantage of all the work and drive and creativity that he and millions like him bring to this country.

La Raza president: Bush immigration proposal 'falls far short'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's announcement Wednesday of new immigration guidelines, including a new temporary worker program, drew mixed reactions.

One person who expressed disappointment was Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group. He spoke to CNN's Heidi Collins shortly after Bush's speech.

YZAGUIRRE: I thought the president was brilliant and magnificent in terms of defending our tradition of immigration. He was compassionate and compelling.

Unfortunately, the proposals that he is making to the Congress don't embody that compassion. When you strip it down, what he's saying, it amounts to nothing more than a warmed-over Bracero program, unfortunately.

COLLINS: Why do you say that?

YZAGUIRRE: Well, what we're talking about is simply giving temporary work permits to either people who are already here or people who will come in. And that is not very different than what we had in the '40s, '50s and '60s, a program called Bracero program, where we imported temporary workers and abused their rights. And we saw endemic patterns of abuses that we all are ashamed of.

COLLINS: You say that this also exposes the worker to possible deportation when the green card or the temporary card runs out.

YZAGUIRRE: Precisely.

You are asking people who are undocumented to come forward, declare the fact that they're undocumented, and then expose themselves to possible, perhaps even probable, deportation after a period of time. It is no pathway to legalization, to earned legalization, to regularization of their status. And it falls far short of what we had talked about before the September the 11th incident.

COLLINS: But the plan does provide incentives to go back to their home country, possibly starting their own business and supporting their families in their own country. It offers them retirement benefits and some new tax savings accounts. Isn't that different than what was offered before?

YZAGUIRRE: No. As a matter of fact, the Bracero program also had a savings provision, which, in fact [was] not lived up to.

But it still amounts to sugarcoating what is not a particularly generous proposition. It's not one that's likely to attract a lot of people coming forth.

COLLINS: Mr. Yzaguirre, what were you hoping the president would offer?

YZAGUIRRE: We were hoping that he would keep his promises to offer comprehensive immigration reform that would include, indeed, perhaps a temporary worker program, but that the heart of it would be earned legalization, a pathway, so that people who are currently paying taxes, subsidizing our Social Security system, improving our standard of living, would have an opportunity to do what millions of other Americans -- other immigrants have done, become American citizens.

COLLINS: What will happen now, in your eyes?

YZAGUIRRE: It's hard to tell.

You know, we don't have a specific proposal. We have a series of concepts and broad strokes. The fact that it comes so late in the legislative calendar makes it very difficult to expect that it will pass Congress this year. So, it may be no more than a political gesture to earn the vote of the Hispanic community.

NCLR STRONGLY CRITICAL OF WHITE HOUSE IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL

[Washington, D.C. — Raul Yzaguirre, President of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, offered this reaction today to President Bush’s announcement on immigration policy:]

Hispanic Americans are extremely disappointed with the President’s announcement today on immigration policy, which appears to offer the business community full access to the immigrant workers it needs while providing very little to the workers themselves. This represents a major departure from the Administration’s posture when they initiated this debate in 2001. This is a bitter disappointment to Latinos who were excited by the President’s apparent willingness two years ago to consider creating a path to permanent legal status for undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States.

The President’s proposal is limited to creating a potentially huge new guestworker program for immigrant workers with no meaningful access to permanent visas or a path to citizenship for those working, paying taxes, and raising their families in the United States. Immigrants would be asked to sign up for what is likely to be second-class status in the American workforce, which could lead to their removal when their status expires or is terminated. Labor rights for temporary workers have historically been weaker than those afforded to workers in the domestic labor force. Under this proposal, workers would be vulnerable during their temporary status, and even more vulnerable when it expires, which would also have a negative impact on wages and working conditions for their U.S.-born co-workers.

The timing of this proposal at the beginning of an election year after more than two years of silence on the issue suggests that the White House intends to appeal to Latino voters by purporting to establish broad and generous access to legal status. The details of the proposal, however, reveal that this is at best an empty promise, and at worst a political ploy aimed at vulnerable immigrants and those of us who care deeply about them. If President Bush is serious about moving a reform agenda forward, we are prepared to work with him, but we will insist on reforms that fully respect the many contributions that immigrants make to this country by putting immigrants on a path to permanent status. Until then, we believe that Latinos will judge the President on his actions, not simply his words.