Thread: KANSAS - State Lawmakers Stall Immigration Proposals

State Lawmakers Stall Immigration Proposals

kake.com
Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Proposals for cracking down on illegal immigration in Kansas are foundering because of a split among majority Republicans in the state House.

But House GOP leaders were under pressure Wednesday to get legislation moving.

House Speaker Mike O'Neal, of Hutchinson, told fellow Republicans during a caucus meeting that he'd prefer to avoid a debate on immigration because it would be divisive.

Some conservatives want the House to debate proposals favored by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped draft tough immigration laws in Alabama and Arizona. Some rural Republicans back a proposal from influential business groups to create a program to place some illegal immigrants in hard-to-fill jobs in agriculture and other industries.

Bills taking both approaches have stalled in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.

source: http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/S...44657 465.html

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In Kansas, businesses lined up behind the proposal backed by Mesa to insert the state into federal immigration proceedings. Under the measure, the state would set up a program for undocumented immigrants working in certain industries. The state would ask the federal government not to deport or jail immigrants in the program. To be eligible, immigrants would have to have a clean criminal record, have lived in the United States more than five years, would agree to learn English and would have to work in industries with severe labor shortages.

"It is all voluntary. It is up to them," said Allie Devine, a former Kansas agriculture secretary who crafted the proposal. "For (immigrants), it is a path to lawful presence and work authorization that they may not have today. So we're trying to bolster their case."