Thread: Immigration would become non-issue under Evanston law

Probes of legal status a no-no?
Immigration would become non-issue under Evanston law
By Deborah Horan | Tribune staff reporter
January 11, 2008
Evanston is poised to approve an ordinance that may make it the first suburban "sanctuary city" in the Chicago area by barring city employees and police from asking about a person's immigration status in most cases.

The City Council's Human Services Committee unanimously approved a draft resolution Monday prohibiting such inquiry unless it is required by law or deemed integral to a police investigation. The resolution also calls on government workers and police to accept a passport or consular card in lieu of a driver's license as proof of identity.

"It's an intent to guide our behavior," said Ald. Cheryl Wollin (1st). "The title of it [includes the words] 'humane and just treatment.' I don't see how anyone can be against humane and just treatment." The resolution is set to come before the City Council as early as February.

The ordinance would anchor the North Shore community at one end of a trend that has seen more and more local governments weigh in on immigration enforcement in the absence of federal reform, analysts said. Municipalities at the other end of the spectrum -- including Waukegan and Carpentersville -- have moved to help enforce immigration policy and have adopted ordinances that many immigrants believe are aimed at chasing them out.

"You see trends in both directions," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University, a non-partisan think tank. "One trend is the enforcement of immigration law. There's also a trend in the opposite direction, where local authorities and especially police forces say the police should not do it."

Chishti said there is no comprehensive database tracking municipal action on immigration matters, but many major metropolitan areas, including Chicago, have become so-called sanctuary cities -- a politically charged phrase that means authorities have directed police and city employees not to ask about immigration status.

Cook County approved a similar resolution last year after a heated debate over whether undocumented immigrants seeking medical care would burden county hospitals, among other issues.

Meanwhile, Waukegan, Carpentersville and Lake County have moved in the other direction, applying for federal training to start deportation proceedings against undocumented immigrants arrested on criminal charges.

"Towns are picking which side they are going to be on," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that bills itself as an "immigration-reduction organization."

Beck believes cities that pass such ordinances will become magnets for illegal immigrants, who he says will use social services at the expense of legal residents. But as he sees it, letting each locality decide its own policy is "kind of a fair system."

"The towns that want to subsidize illegal aliens can, and the towns that don't want to don't have to because they can push the illegal aliens out," Beck said.

Of about a dozen people questioned in downtown Evanston on Thursday, none agreed with Beck's belief that illegal immigrants will drain city services.

"That's an illusionary idea out in the public, but it's not backed up by statistics," said Evanston resident Christopher Maylone, 44.

Sanctuary cities are mostly symbolic, said David Abraham, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami School of Law.

"Local government officials are not immigration officers," Abraham said. "No sanctuary policy that I've ever heard of goes beyond a commitment to follow existing law. They're all crafted to endorse the status quo."

Evanston is the only Chicago suburb to take up the matter as a proposed ordinance, according to data from the National Immigration Law Center, though many police departments, including those in Skokie, Cicero and Oak Park, have directed officers not to inquire about immigration status unless there is an indictment or conviction.

"If they begin to ask about immigration, they lose the trust of witnesses coming forth, and community policing becomes much more difficult," Chishti said.

Evanston City Council members admit the ordinance is largely symbolic in that the city's police and government agencies don't ask about immigration status anyway. Officials said they merely want to give an unofficial policy the weight of an ordinance to put at ease the city's foreign-born population -- which makes up roughly 12.5 percent of Evanston's 74,000 residents, according to a 2006 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.

And indeed, much of the resolution is political. It concludes, for instance, by calling on the president of the United States to support comprehensive immigration reform that would provide "a road to citizenship ... so that residents are not forced to live in fear of deportation."

Started through a grass-roots effort by clergy, teachers, local officials and activists, Evanston's draft resolution has gained support from interfaith organizations, the YWCA and Evanston's former police chief, as well as U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston).

"We have been very disturbed in the last number of months by the extremely virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric creeping across the country," said Rachel Heuman, a grass-roots activist who helped craft Evanston's draft resolution.

Several of Evanston's aldermen said they expect the draft resolution to be approved. It's being held in committee to await input from immigrant groups and residents, said Ald. Steve Bernstein (4th).

"My hope is that everybody is given basic human rights everywhere," Bernstein said. "But it better start with Evanston."

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dhoran@tribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 7658.story

Press Release

September 24, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, contact Ibis Antongiorgi, Press Secretary to Cook County Board President Todd H. Stroger, at 312-603-0396 or by email at iantongiorgi@cookcountygov.com.

Experts: Cook County Deficit Driven by Structural Shortfall in Revenue from Federal, Other Sources


Independent analysis demonstrates that cuts in federal programs and failure of other revenue sources to keep pace with inflation create shortfall in funds to pay for core services. Federal cuts in Medicaid expected to cost over half a billion dollars between 2008 and 2012, exacerbating already acute revenue shortfall.

Report and executive summary available online at www.ctbaonline.org by clicking here.
September September 24, 2007 – The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability – the CTBA – has issued a report this week that concludes that Cook County’s revenue system is structurally unable to support the essential public services it is tasked to provide.

The CTBA analyzed Cook County's entire fiscal system, focusing specifically on the ability of the County's revenue base to keep up with the inflationary costs alone of providing public services. The report's principal finding is that the County's annual revenue growth falls far short of annual expenditure growth, taking into account only inflation and holding public services at 2007 levels into the future.

The report notes that state and local governments across the United States are facing significant fiscal challenges, particularly the fact that the cost of public services provided by local governments is growing at a rate greater than local revenues, resulting in expanding annual deficits. The primary culprit in this dynamic is the cost of health care, which is increasing more than three times more quickly than the general inflation rate.

Public health care providers like Cook County have seen demand for their services grow at the same time that cuts in the federal Medicaid program have resulted in the loss of millions from the pool of health care dollars nationally, say the report’s authors, Heather O’Donnell and Ralph Martire. According to their research, federal Medicaid cuts cost Cook County $139 million between 2005 and 2007. At the same time, employer-sponsored health care coverage has declined and public safety- net providers like Cook County are filling the gap. For example, visits to the network of Cook County hospitals and clinics increased by nearly 200,000 in fiscal year 2005, and the number of prescriptions filled at the County increased by 73% between 2003 and 2005.

The authors note that this increase in demand has occurred during a period when Cook County’s revenue sources have remained flat or actually declined in recent years.

“This ongoing fiscal mismatch between revenues that underperform inflation and service costs that grow at rates above inflation has resulted in chronic annual budget deficits,â€

We already have the law here in Utah. You are not allowed to ask. The police here are just sick of it.

As I said before ask everyone they stop and they will not be racial profileing, this is crap.

Police officer....Hello may I see your drivers license and are you a citizen of the United States or a Legal Resident....end of story.

I don't give a damn is they ask me, do you?

I don't care if they ask me. If I needed to I would pin my passport on my coat everyday. Just get the illegal out of here.

Here is a newsletter that I got. Ms. Mueller sounds like a real go-getter. Great for Illinois.


THE CITIZEN SECURITY NETWORKER
an e-newsletter of the Illinois Citizen Security Network
2008-FEB-10 newsletter 2008.2

Topic: EVANSTON SANCTUARY CITY RESOLUTION


Dear Friends Opposed to Illegal Immigration:

Attached is the draft of the "sanctuary city" resolution for the City of Evanston, Illinois.

Evanston is the home of Northwestern University.

I have prefaced the attachment with some notes regarding the culture of Evanston. The file is large (6 MB). (I do not have the capability at the moment to produce a PDF file.)

The city council of Evanston is scheduled to meet this Monday, February 11th @ 8:30 p.m. (However, I urge all attendees to confirm this date and time with the city clerk before venturing out, because meetings have been known to be rescheduled, or start early, on very short notice.)

A three-minute public comment time is allowed for residents of Evanston; see the city website for details. Non-residents may or may not be allowed to speak, at the council's discretion. I encourage all Evanston residents to attend the city council meeting and speak out against this sanctuary proposal.

The Human Services Committee is the City of Evanston committee that drafted and is currently working on the resolution. It is my understanding that the resolution is currently being held in committee. The next meeting of the Human Services Committee is scheduled for Monday, February 18th at 7:00 p.m. The sanctuary resolution is expected to be considered at this meeting, and is to be voted upon and passed out of committee, before it can be presented to the city council for consideration and action as a whole. This Human Services Committee meeting is open to the public. I encourage all Evanston residents, and others concerned about this issue, to attend this committee meeting and voice your dissent.

The city calendar can be found here:
http://www.cityofevanston.org/Calendar/ ... e=Evanston

The website of the City of Evanston can be found here:
http://www.cityofevanston.org/

Evanston news media:
http://www.evanstonroundtable.com/
http://www.evanstonnow.com/
http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/

Please contact me if you are interested in participating in a coordinated group effort to stop adoption of this resolution. My contact information is below.

Please forward this message to all Evanstonians who may be interested in stopping this resolution.

Please forward this newsletter to all interested group members, solo activists and other citizens who are interested in securing our borders, ending illegal immigration, and protecting our citizens and the value of our citizenship and our vote here in Illinois.

Kind regards,

Dawn Marie Mueller
ILLINOIS CITIZEN SECURITY NETWORK

muellerdawn@sbcglobal.net