State lawmakers preparing citizenship legislation

PHOENIX – The state senator in Arizona who wrote the nation's toughest law against illegal immigrants said Tuesday he's collecting support across the country from legislators to challenge automatic U.S. citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce's target is the 14th Amendment, but it is unclear how the state lawmaker can or will influence a federal statue.
"This is a battle of epic proportions," Pearce said Tuesday during a news conference at the Arizona Capitol. "We've allowed the hijacking of the 14th Amendment."
Pearce declined to say how the legislation will differ from similar measures that have been introduced in each two-year congressional session since 2005. None of them made it out of committee.
He and another Arizona lawmaker did argue that wording in the amendment that guarantees citizenship to people born in the U.S. who are "subject to the jurisdiction" of this country does not apply to the children of illegal immigrants because such families don't owe sole allegiance to the U.S.
The efforts by Pearce and the other lawmakers come amid calls to change the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. Supporters cite costs to taxpayers for services provided to illegal immigrants and their children.
Changing the Constitution is difficult.
It requires approval by two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, an impossibility now because Democrats have the majority in both houses and most oppose such a measure. Even if Republicans gain power in November and legislation is passed, an amendment would still need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.
Paul Bender, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University, said if the lawmakers focus their argument on the "subject to jurisdiction" wording, they won't get very far because the founders only meant it to apply to the children of foreign diplomats born in the U.S.
"If the British ambassador and his wife have a child in the U.S., that child is not a citizen because he is not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. We cannot put him in jail, we cannot even give him a parking ticket," Bender said.
The 14th Amendment "could have easily have said you're a citizen if you owe your allegiance, but our Constitution doesn't say that," he said. "It says if you're born here, and you're not a diplomat's child, then you become a citizen, and that's the way its been for 100 years."
Carlos Galindo-Elvira, vice president of Valle del Sol, a Phoenix group that provides social services to community members and advocates for immigrants, said Pearce's interpretation of the amendment is an effort to "legitimize bullying babies."
He also questioned why lawmakers would focus on this issue rather than the country's economic woes and high unemployment rate. "All it does is split the country," he said.
Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, the founder of a national group of legislators critical of illegal immigration, said the 14th Amendment "greatly incentives foreign invaders to violate our border and our laws." He had a news conference Tuesday in Harrisburg, Pa., on the multistate endeavor.
The effort could run afoul of the language in the 14th Amendment and lead to a court battle over the constitutionality of the law. But Metcalfe said providing birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants is an "ongoing distortion and twisting" of the amendment.
Metcalfe's office said lawmakers in at least 12 other states besides Arizona and Pennsylvania said they were making their own announcements about working on the citizenship legislation. Those other states: Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
Pearce was the main sponsor of a tough new Arizona law that would require police enforcing other laws to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the U.S. illegally. It was to go into effect this summer, but a judge put on hold key provisions pending the resolution of a legal challenge.
Pearce also was the chief sponsor of a 2007 state law targeting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the 2010 law and who is championing the state's legal defense of it against a court challenge mounted by the U.S. Justice Department, was noncommittal when asked whether lawmakers should approve legislation on citizenship.
However, Brewer said she was "always concerned" by the possibility of involving the state in a court fight. "No one wants to be in court. No one wants to be fighting the federal government," she said.

Brief for 9 states backs Arizona immigration law

DETROIT – Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has filed a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting Arizona's immigration law.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate said Wednesday that Michigan is the lead state backing Arizona in federal court. Michigan is joined by Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia, as well as the Northern Mariana Islands.
Cox says states are authorized to enforce immigration laws and protect their borders.
The Arizona law directs officers to question people about their immigration status during the enforcement of other laws and if there's a reasonable suspicion they're in the U.S. illegally.
President Barack Obama's administration recently filed suit to block it, saying immigration is a federal issue.

List of alleged illegal immigrants mailed in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY – A list containing the names and personal information of 1,300 people an anonymous group contends are illegal immigrants has been mailed around Utah, terrifying the state's Hispanic community.
Republican Gov. Gary Herbert wrote in a tweet Tuesday that he has asked state agencies to investigate the list — sent anonymously to several media outlets, and law enforcement and state agencies. A letter accompanying the list demands that those on it be deported immediately.
Most of the names on the list are of Hispanic origin. The list also contains highly detailed personal information such as
Social Security numbers, birth dates, workplaces, addresses and phone numbers. Names of children are included, along with due dates of pregnant women on the list.
"My phone has been ringing nonstop since this morning with people finding out they're on the list," said Tony Yapias, former director of the Utah Office of Hispanic Affairs. "They're feeling terrorized. They're very scared."
The list's release comes as several conservative Utah lawmakers consider sponsoring a tough new illegal immigration law similar to the one passed recently in

Arizona.
Arizona's law, which takes effect July 29, directs police enforcing other laws to ask about a suspect's immigration status if there is reason to believe the person is in the United States illegally.
Herbert has said a new immigration law likely will be passed when lawmakers convene in January, although he said it may be different from Arizona's. Herbert spokeswoman Angie Welling was traveling back from Washington, D.C., Tuesday and could not immediately be reached for comment.
The letter included a long recipient list, including newspapers, broadcast outlets, The Associated Press, law enforcement and state agencies, various Utah officials, and the Department of Homeland Security. The letters began arriving in mailboxes in recent days.
Dave Lewis, communication director for the state Department of Workforce Services, said his agency didn't receive a copy of the list from the governor's office until late Tuesday.
"We've got some people in our technology department looking at it right now," he said. "It's a high priority. We want to figure out the how's and why's."
He said his agency is one of several with access to the information included in the list.
The letter says some names on the list were sent to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in
Salt Lake City in April. It says the new list includes new names, for a total of more than 1,300.
Included with the new letter is one dated April 4 addressed to "Customs and Immigration" and from "Concerned Citizens of the United States."
In the April letter, the writers say their group "observes these individuals in our neighborhoods, driving on our streets, working in our stores, attending our schools and entering our public welfare buildings."
"We then spend the time and effort needed to gather information along with legal Mexican nationals who infiltrate their social networks and help us obtain the necessary information we need to add them to our list," the letter says.
Agency spokeswoman Virginia Kice said ICE received a copy of the list, but she declined to say whether it is investigating the immigration status of the people on it.
"As a matter of policy, we don't confirm we are investigating an allegation or possible violation unless the inquiry results in some type of public enforcement action," Kice said.
She noted that because ICE has finite resources, it focuses its efforts "first on those dangerous convicted criminal aliens who present the greatest risk to the security of our communities, not sweeps or raids to target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately."
Kice added that the agency has had a means for the public to report suspected criminal activity for several years — a 24-hour tip line staffed by trained enforcement personnel.

Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals in Arizona

Anchor babies" isn't a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation's toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots - the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. - for their next move.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists - things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See the battle for Arizona: will a border crackdown work?)

But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age
immigrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the "anchor" and leave.
The question is whether that would violate the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment states that "all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It was intended to provide citizenship for freed slaves and served as a final answer to the Dred Scott case, cementing the federal government's control over citizenship.

But that was 1868. Today,  Pearce says the 14th Amendment has been "hijacked" by illegal immigrants. "They use it as a wedge," Pearce says. "This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we've created." Pearce says he is aware of the constitutional issues involved with the bill and vows to introduce it nevertheless. "We will write it right." He and other Republicans in the red state Arizona point to popular sympathy: 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think illegal immigrants whose children are born here should not receive citizenship; support for that stance is 76% among Republicans.
Those who oppose the bill say it would lead to more discrimination and divide the community. Among them is Phoenix resident Susan Vie, who is leading a citizen group that's behind an opposing ballot initiative. She moved to the U.S. 30 years ago from Argentina, became a naturalized citizen and now works as a client-relations representative for a vaccine company. "I see a lot of hate and racism behind it," Vie says. "Consequently, I believe it will create - and it's creating it now - a separation in our society." She adds, "When people look at me, they will think, 'Is she legal or illegal?' I can already feel it right now." Vie's citizen initiative would prohibit SB 1070 from taking affect, place a three-year moratorium on all related laws - including the anchor baby bill - to buy more time for federal immigration reform. Her group is racing to collect 153,365 signatures by July 1 to qualify for the Nov. 2 general election.
Both sides expect the anchor baby bill to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court before it is enacted. "I think it would be struck down as facially unconstitutional. I can't imagine a federal judge saying this would be OK," says Dan Barr, a longtime Phoenix lawyer and constitutional litigator. Potentially joining the anchor baby bill at the Supreme Court may be SB 1070, which Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law in April. It is set to take effect July 29, but at least five courtroom challenges have been filed against it. Pearce says he will win them all.

Arizona Immigration Law FALLOUT: New Law Sparks Fiery Debate

WASHINGTON – Backed into a corner by Arizona's tough new immigration law, Democrats and Republicans alike find themselves grappling with a volatile issue neither party wanted to fight over just before important midterm congressional elections.

As lawmakers learned during the last national debate on immigration, in 2007, the issue incites passions across the country, affecting everything from national security to states' rights to racial ambitions and resentments. It's fraught with political minefields.
Thus, President Barack Obama, the Democrats who control Congress and Republicans who are in the minority are doing a delicate dance, mindful not to anger their electoral bases — or independents — on the issue.
Underscoring the careful maneuvering, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tried to strike a balance in testimony to Congress on Tuesday, saying, "Continually enhancing border security is not only critical for border communities, but is a necessary part of any comprehensive attempt to fix our nation's broken immigration system to make it work for the 21st century."

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.
Compliments of the New York Times
April 23, 2010
The move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally.
Even before she signed the bill at an afternoon news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it.
Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”
The Arizona law, he added, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
The law, which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.
The political debate leading up to Ms. Brewer’s decision, and Mr. Obama’s criticism of the law — presidents very rarely weigh in on state legislation — underscored the power of the immigration debate in states along the Mexican border. It presaged the polarizing arguments that await the president and Congress as they take up the issue nationally.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was worried about the rights of its citizens and relations with Arizona. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said the authorities’ ability to demand documents was like “Nazism.”
As hundreds of demonstrators massed, mostly peacefully, at the capitol plaza, the governor, speaking at a state building a few miles away, said the law “represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”
The law was to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, meaning by August. Court challenges were expected immediately.
Hispanics, in particular, who were not long ago courted by the Republican Party as a swing voting bloc, railed against the law as a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling. “Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”
While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.
Ms. Brewer acknowledged critics’ concerns, saying she would work to ensure that the police have proper training to carry out the law. But she sided with arguments by the law’s sponsors that it provides an indispensable tool for the police in a border state that is a leading magnet of illegal immigration. She said racial profiling would not be tolerated, adding, “We have to trust our law enforcement.”
Ms. Brewer and other elected leaders have come under intense political pressure here, made worse by the killing of a rancher in southern Arizona by a suspected smuggler a couple of weeks before the State Legislature voted on the bill. His death was invoked Thursday by Ms. Brewer herself, as she announced a plan urging the federal government to post National Guard troops at the border.
President George W. Bush had attempted comprehensive reform but failed when his own party split over the issue. Once again, Republicans facing primary challenges from the right, including Ms. Brewer and Senator John McCain, have come under tremendous pressure to support the Arizona law, known as SB 1070.
Mr. McCain, locked in a primary with a challenger campaigning on immigration, only came out in support of the law hours before the State Senate passed it Monday afternoon.
Governor Brewer, even after the Senate passed the bill, had been silent on whether she would sign it. Though she was widely expected to, given her primary challenge, she refused to state her position even at a dinner on Thursday for a Hispanic social service organization, Chicanos Por La Causa, where several audience members called out “Veto!”
Among other things, the Arizona measure is an extraordinary rebuke to former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who had vetoed similar legislation repeatedly as a Democratic governor of the state before being appointed Homeland Security secretary by Mr. Obama.
The law opens a deep fissure in Arizona, with a majority of the thousands of callers to the governor’s office urging her to reject it.
In the days leading up to Ms. Brewer’s decision, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat, called for a convention boycott of his state.
The bill, sponsored by Russell Pearce, a state senator and a firebrand on immigration issues, has several provisions.
It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.
It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.
States across the country have proposed or enacted hundreds of bills addressing immigration since 2007, the last time a federal effort to reform immigration law collapsed. Last year, there were a record number of laws enacted (222) and resolutions (131) in 48 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The prospect of plunging into a national immigration debate is being increasingly talked about on Capitol Hill, spurred in part by recent statements by Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, that he intends to bring legislation to the Senate floor after Memorial Day.
But while an immigration debate could help energize Hispanic voters and provide political benefits to embattled Democrats seeking re-election in November — like Mr. Reid — it could also energize conservative voters.
It could also take time from other Democratic priorities, including an energy measure that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described as her flagship issue.
Mr. Reid declined Thursday to say that immigration would take precedence over an energy measure. But he called it an imperative: “The system is broken,” he said.
Ms. Pelosi and Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, have said that the House would be willing to take up immigration policy only if the Senate produces a bill first.

Is a Biometric Identity Card the Key to Immigration Reform?

Could a national identity card help resolve the heated immigration-reform divide?

Two Senators, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, certainly seem to think so. They recently presented an immigration-bill blueprint to President Barack Obama that includes a proposal to issue a biometric ID card - one that would contain physical data such as fingerprints or retinal scans - to all working Americans. The "enhanced Social Security card" is being touted as a way to curb illegal immigration by giving employers the power to quickly and accurately determine who is eligible to work. "If you say [illegal immigrants] can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it," Schumer told the Wall Street Journal. Proponents also hope legal hiring will be easier for employers if there's a single go-to document instead of the 26 that new employees can currently use to show they're authorized to work.
But with a congressional skirmish over comprehensive immigration reform on the horizon, skeptics from the left and the right have raised numerous concerns about the biometric ID - some of which pop up every time a form of national identification is proposed, and some that hinge on the shape this plan ultimately takes.
The sheer scale of the project is a potential problem, in terms of time, money and technology. The premise of using a biometric employment card (which would most likely contain fingerprint data) to stop illegal immigrants from working requires that all 150 million–plus American workers, not just immigrants, have one. Michael Cherry, president of identification-technology company Cherry Biometrics, says the accuracy of such large-scale biometric measuring hasn't been proved. "What study have we done?" he says. "We just have a few assumptions."
Schumer estimates that employers would have to pay up to $800 for card-reading machines, and many point out that compliance could prove burdensome for many small-to-medium-size businesses. In a similar program run by the Department of Homeland Security, in which 1.4 million transportation workers have been issued biometric credentials, applicants each pay $132.50 to help cover the costs of the initiative, which so far run in the hundreds of millions. "This is sort of like the worst combination of the DMV and the TSA," says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU, an organization that has traditionally opposed all forms of national ID. "It's going to be enormously costly no matter what."
Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says the pace of expanding the program is crucial. He believes that issuing the cards on a rolling basis and viewing them as "the next version of the driver's license" makes the idea of a nationally issued biometric ID seem much less daunting. "I think that there is a risk in overreaching too quickly," he says.
Another potential issue is whether the card will result in people being wrongfully denied work. The average person isn't equipped to determine whether two fingerprints are a match - even FBI fingerprint experts have their off days, as when they incorrectly implicated a Portland, Ore., attorney in the 2004 bombings in Madrid - which means employers would be relying on an automated system. And that, as well as the fingerprinting process itself, invariably leads to some small number of mistakes.
In testimony given at a Senate immigration hearing in July 2009, Illinois Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, who has led the drive for immigration reform in the House, pointed out that an error rate of just 1% would mean that more than 1.5 million people - roughly the population of Philadelphia - would be wrongly deemed ineligible for work. "This is no small number," he said, "especially in this economy, where so many workers already face extraordinary obstacles to finding a job." Dean Pradeep Khosla, founding director of Carnegie Mellon's cybersecurity lab, estimates that the error rates of computerized systems would likely be less than 2% (and could be less than 1%) but says they can never be zero. Civil-liberties advocates, citing the secret post-9/11 no-fly lists that innocents couldn't get their names removed from, worry about whether those mistakenly put on the no-job list will ever be given the chance to correct the information.
Many skeptics also worry about false positives that come not from the computer but from counterfeits or employers looking to bypass the system. "It's naive to think that this document won't be faked," Calabrese says. "Folks are already paying $10,000 to sneak into the country. What's a couple thousand more?" In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Schumer and Graham said the card would be "fraud-proof" and that employers would face "stiff fines" and possibly imprisonment if they tried to get around using it. But Cherry half-jokes that someone could falsify such an ID in 15 minutes, and Khosla says that while current technology makes fingerprints the most feasible biometric marker to use, they're also one of the easiest to steal.
Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes that keeping biometric information out of a centralized database is "the biggest challenge." Otherwise, she says, the prospect of having millions of fingerprints on hand would be too tempting for the government not to abuse. In their op-ed, the Senators said the information would be stored only on the card.
Although the card is being presented as existing solely for determining employment eligibility, "it will be almost impossible to say that this wealth of information is there, but you can only use it for this purpose," Coney says. "Privacy is pretty much hinged on the notion that if you collect data for one purpose, you can't use it for another." Calabrese expresses worries that this ID will become a "central identity document" that one will need in order to travel, vote or perhaps own a gun, which Melmed calls "mission creep."
Some dismiss privacy concerns as reflections of general government mistrust rather than legitimate technology issues. But Melmed believes that the practical issues will have to be addressed before the "social-acceptance debate" over biometric cards can even begin, and both rely on many details that the Senators have yet to present. "People are waiting to see something in writing," Calabrese says. "But the idea doesn't fill people with a warm, fuzzy feeling."