http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stor ... 61569.html

Inland Republicans reject amnesty for illegal immigrants


10:00 PM PST on Sunday, February 18, 2007

By SHARON McNARY
The Press-Enterprise

An immigration lawyer joked recently as he quizzed Riverside Catholics on the visas they used to enter the United States.

Was it a tourist visa? Some raised their hands. A student visa? A few more hands rose. "Was it Visa C? As in Coyote?" he laughed.

More than half of the 170 people who packed the parish hall at Our Queen of Angels Catholic Church to hear about the church's stance on immigration policy raised their hands.

Even though many at the meeting are not entitled to vote, 120 of them wrote letters to Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, on Monday night asking him to support changes in federal immigration laws, said Miriam Padilla, an organizer with Inland Congregations United for Change.

The letters, most of them in Spanish, jammed the fax machine in Calvert's Washington, D.C., office Tuesday. The effort was timed to coincide with a meeting of Calvert's staff and members of the Diocese of San Bernardino's Office of Social Concerns to explain the church's stance on immigration laws. It was expected to be the first of many such meetings.

As congressional leaders in both parties say the time is ripe to overhaul immigration laws, Calvert is among Inland Republican representatives who say they will not support a bill that grants automatic amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Both Rep. Joe Baca, D-Rialto, who is part of the new House majority, and the Hispanic caucus he heads, support a rewrite.

Baca, the Inland area's lone Democratic congressman, wants increased immigration enforcement at borders and in workplaces as well as a plan to legalize many illegal immigrants, a three-part overhaul that supporters call comprehensive reform.

"The real question is whether congressional Republicans, including my colleagues in the Inland delegation, are willing to support a comprehensive approach instead of legislation that only aims at enforcement and punishment," he said in a written statement.

He declined to be interviewed.

But Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, said a broad legalization would be unacceptable to residents of his district, which includes Temecula and Murrieta.

"Democrats are asking for new immigrants, en masse, to be allowed to disproportionately come from Mexico and be citizens," he said.

Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, the target of numerous demonstrations last year protesting her support of an enforcement-oriented immigration bill, said she receives hundreds of letters opposing amnesty each week.

Bono said she supports a "robust guest-worker program" that would permit people who are in the country illegally to receive work permits but not automatic permanent residency or citizenship. It would be impractical to require illegal immigrants to leave the country to get the permits, she said.

"The reality is that they are here, parts of our economy depend on them, and if we don't make this system easy to use," it will fail, she said.

Like President Bush, Senate leaders are intent on passing a comprehensive immigration bill this year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have said immigration reform is a priority.

The immigration-overhaul effort gridlocked Congress in 2006 because a majority of senators who favored comprehensive reform clashed with members of the Republican-dominated House who wanted workplace and border enforcement first.

The Inland area's Republican representatives generally favor increased enforcement and border security and oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. The 1986 federal amnesty granted 2.7 million people legal status.

All of the Inland Republicans supported a proposed 2005 bill that would have made it a crime to be an illegal immigrant or to help one. Opposition to the bill, known as HR 4437, provoked more than 1 million people to join marches and street demonstrations last spring.

Calvert said a comprehensive immigration bill could pass this year if it includes enough immigration law enforcement in the country's interior to satisfy the estimated 20 to 30 Republicans whose votes are needed to pass such a bill.

"Then you're going to have guys like me who are going to try to stop it if it has provisions that I believe people in my district don't support," Calvert said.

He does not support granting illegal immigrants legal status ahead of those who entered the country legally. Calvert also wants undocumented residents to return to their countries of origin to gain guest-worker or other legal status.

Issa opposes amnesty for all illegal immigrants and a guest-worker or visa program that automatically leads to permanent residency or citizenship.

"I believe in guest workers and in immigration, and I believe the two are separate," Issa said.

He said he would support a guest-worker program from which participants might apply for permanent residency as they do now in other visa programs for foreign technical and agricultural workers.

Democrats' new control of Congress does not guarantee passage of an immigration-law overhaul that legalizes undocumented immigrants, said John Keeley, communications director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports greater enforcement.

Many Democrats who displaced Republicans in the House are more conservative on immigration issues and ran campaigns promising more enforcement, not legalization, Keeley said.

"The president and the Democrats don't have the numbers there," he said.

Instead, Congress is more likely to pass piecemeal measures, like the DREAM Act, which gives children of illegal immigrants access to in-state college tuition, and AgJOBS, a new visa program for agricultural workers, Keeley said.

The new Democratic majority, having won Latino votes in 2006 that went to Republicans two years earlier, cannot afford to lose that support in 2008 by failing to pass an immigration-overhaul bill, said Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports a comprehensive bill.

Republicans who were previously in the majority observed strict party discipline by supporting the enforcement-oriented HR 4437 in late 2005. Now they will have more latitude to support a comprehensive bill, she said.

"They've got constituencies who have large businesses without sufficient labor who have a lot of illegal employees in agriculture and industry," Kelley said.

Alicia Segura, 43, a legal immigrant from Mexico who lives in Riverside, hopes Calvert takes her letter to heart because, "I have friends and family here who need a change in the law."

Reach Sharon McNary at 951-368-9458 or smcnary@PE.com

Illegal immigrants

United States: 11.1 million

California: 2.5 million to 2.7 million

Inland: 215,000 in Riverside and San Bernardino counties

SOURCE: Pew Hispanic Center estimates based on 2005 Current Population Survey of the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census.