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Attorney General urged to withhold opinion on immigration
Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau
Article Launched: 10/09/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT

AUSTIN -- Texas lawmakers are asking the state's top lawyer to do the impossible and interpret immigration laws that don't yet exist, two civil-rights groups said this week in calling on the attorney general not to issue an opinion.
"They're asking for an interpretation of proposed laws that have no actual language," said Luis Figueroa, legislative attorney for the Mexican American Legal and Educational Defense Fund.

This summer, two Republican legislators asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott what authority the state had to impose sanctions on businesses that hire undocumented immigrants and to stop cities from enacting so-called "sanctuary" policies.

Last week, MALDEF and the ACLU of Texas sent letters to Abbott urging him to decline the request. They argued it would be a waste of time to issue an opinion on the constitutionality of laws that do not exist and proposals modeled after statutes that are being litigated in other states.

The federal government, Figueroa said, already has a scheme of sanctions for employers who hire undocumented workers.

And the term "sanctuary city," which generally refers to local governments that prevent police from turning undocumented immigrants over to federal officials, has no real legal definition, he said.

The larger issue, said ACLU policy strategist Matt Simpson, is whether state lawmakers should attempt to regulate immigration, a federal responsibility.

"Having states deal with immigration piecemeal is not as good a strategy, and also constitutionally it can be a problem," he said.
State Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, and state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said they were simply seeking guidance from Abbott to avoid wasting time filing unworkable proposals during the 140-day legislative session that will start in January.

Last year, lawmakers filed dozens of immigration-related bills that Abbott later deemed violated the U.S. Constitution or federal law.

Corte said the federal government should address the nation's immigration problems but has repeatedly failed, and states are paying the price in schools, hospitals and other public services.

"For us to say we're going to wait for the feds, to me, is almost the same thing as an unfunded mandate from the federal government," he said.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said the attorney general should not issue an opinion until immigration cases in other states are resolved.

"What nearly every court has found is that immigration is a federal issue," he said.

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