Our View: It's not the time for immigration bills in Idaho
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION


OUR VIEW

IMMIGRATION
- Idaho Statesman
Edition Date: 12/16/08

Comments (7) | Recommend (0)

If nothing else, the 2009 Legislature at least will be flush with problems.

Lawmakers should be fully focused on the issues under their control - dropping state tax revenues, a sputtering state economy, a deteriorating road system. They can ill afford to dabble in other big issues beyond their control.

Unfortunately, two North Idaho legislators seem determined to recycle an ill-conceived anti-immigration bill, a fatally patch-and-scratch approach to a problem that needs to be solved at the federal level.

Sen. Michael Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, and Rep. Phil Hart, R-Athol, will try again with a bill that could suspend or revoke the business license of any employer who knowingly hires illegal aliens.

In arguing for his bill in a recent Coeur d'Alene Press article, Jorgenson actually exposes one of its weaknesses. "The state's only recourse to curb illegal immigration is enforcement through employers."

Bingo. The state cannot possibly address the other factors that contribute to a dysfunctional immigration system. Only the federal government can set up a security system that keeps people from crossing the border illegally, address the status and the fate of the estimated 12 million people in America illegally, and set up a guest worker system that ensures employers can find the laborers they need.

That latter point is crucial to employers, even in a recession that continues to drive up the state's unemployment rate. It is unrealistic and unfair to burden farmers and employers with the administrative headache of enforcing federal immigration law, without providing these employers a guest worker system.

That's one good reason why lawmakers have rejected this legislation two years running. Here's another: Idaho consumers will wind up paying the costs.

Idaho Farm Bureau Federation spokesman John Thompson stopped short of taking a position on the latest bill. But he also told the Coeur d'Alene Press that growers would have no choice but to raise their prices on commodities.

If all Idaho lawmakers can do is address part of a complicated problem, and force their struggling constituents to pay more at the supermarket checkstand, then lawmakers really are better off doing nothing.

This bill is borne out of a frustration with the feds - and as far as that goes, we're on the same side as Jorgenson and Hart.

President Bush will leave office next month with the nation's immigration system still a mess, and Congress certainly deserves its share of the blame. With the candidates consumed by other economic wildfires, immigration became a nonissue in the presidential campaign. This doesn't suggest much of a sense of urgency, but it's still up to President-elect Obama and his Cabinet nominees to address the problem (and in Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, his homeland security secretary nominee, Obama has at least one Cabinet member well acquainted with the immigration problem and its effects on the states).

While they wait, Idaho lawmakers have plenty of other things to do.

"Our View" is the editorial position of the Idaho Statesman. It is an unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Statesman's editorial board. To comment on an editorial or suggest a topic, e-mail editorial@idahostatesman.com.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/126/story/605285.html