Anti-illegal immigration bills introduced at State House

Susana Aho
Issue date: 2/27/07

Illegal immigrants will face more difficulty living and working in Rhode Island if the General Assembly approves several bills introduced this month.

One of these bills would require all companies with employees in Rhode Island to verify employees' legal immigration using a federal database. Additionally, State Rep. Richard Singleton, R-Dist. 52, has announced plans to introduce 16 more bills that would cut back on social services provided to illegal immigrants.

Singleton's proposed laws include measures to prohibit the children of illegal immigrants from attending public schools and deny welfare to illegal immigrants, according to the Web site of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, an anti-illegal immigration group.

Singleton has also drafted a bill banning bilingual education. "English is the language of business and the language of culture and that is what we should be demanding that people speak whether they're legal or illegal," he told The Herald.

"American culture is at stake," he said. "Any country with two cultures is in trouble, long-term."

Earlier this month, Sen. Marc Cote, D-Dist. 24, and Rep. Jon Brien, D-Dist. 50, introduced a pair of bills in the General Assembly that would require all companies hiring in Rhode Island to use the Federal Basic Employment Verification Pilot Program, a system that submits an employee's information to a federal database to verify their immigration status, according to a Feb. 12 press release.

Results from the database are available within five seconds in 87 percent of cases, according to the press release. If the legal status of an immigrant cannot be verified, the employer would have to fire them within eight days.

"It is clear that the federal government is not effectively addressing illegal immigration, and that the individual states must take action," Cote said in the release.

The bills have met some opposition.

Ellen Gallagher, outreach coordinator at the International Institute of Rhode Island, said the Basic Pilot program "has been shown to be flawed" and often incorrectly labels legal immigrants as undocumented.

Gallagher said the program would only lead to racial profiling and discrimination, since employers won't want to go through the hassle involved in hiring someone who might be an immigrant. She said it should not be the job of business owners to enforce immigration laws.

Bills such as these are "a symptom of greater anti-immigrant sentiment and just the fact that it has been introduced is of concern," Gallagher said.

Grace Cornell '07, a volunteer with English for Action - a local nonprofit that teaches English and arts to Latino immigrant families - said she found the bills "frightening."

She said laws excluding immigrants from public school and welfare are "simply unconstitutional."

Cornell said even though it may not seem that these bills "affect someone who's a citizen and who's white … it really reflects badly on everyone if we're living in a country that's violating people's human rights."

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