Bay Area activist working to put Arizona-style immigration law on California ballot

By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 11/23/2010 02:28:34 PM PST
Updated: 11/23/2010 02:54:55 PM PST


BELMONT -- A Republican activist from Belmont is raising signatures to place an Arizona-style immigration law on the California ballot in 2012.

The proposition would require all state and local police officers to investigate the immigration status of people they stop if they have reasonable suspicion the person is in the country illegally. It would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek work while concealing their immigration status. And it would make it a state crime for an employer to hire an undocumented immigrant, whether the hiring happens intentionally or negligently.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced Tuesday that the proponent, Michael Erickson, could begin collecting signatures. He must collect the signatures of 433,971 voters by April 21 in order for the initiative to qualify for the 2012 ballot.

Erickson calls the measure the Support Federal Immigration Law Initiative. The proposition would also allow legal residents to sue any state official or agency if their policies restrict the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

"Since we're never going to get this passed through the Democrat-controlled Legislature, it's going to be we the people who are going to make it happen," Erickson told a Bay Area tea party rally recently, according to a video of the rally at the initiative's website.

Erickson said he took the text of Arizona's law, SB 1070, and applied it to California's penal code, and also strengthened the language to overcome likely constitutional challenges. The Department of Justice sued over Arizona's law this summer, causing a judge to strike down its most controversial provisions. The Arizona law is now being argued in a federal appeals court in San Francisco.

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