Making Illegal Immigrants Feel At Home
By: Assemblymember Jean Fuller

Approximately eleven million illegal immigrants call the United States their home, and an estimated one in every four is living right here in California.

By some accounts, California’s illegal immigration problem costs the state’s taxpayers more than $10.5 billion each year in education, medical care and incarceration services.

Those who tell you this is not a serious issue fail to recognize the significance of these numbers. Instead of coming up with ways to stem the flow of illegal immigration, they propose solutions that only exacerbate it.

Assembly Bill 976, authored by Democrat Assemblyman Charles Calderon, would prohibit local governments from enacting ordinances that allow landlords to collect residency or citizenship information of prospective tenants.

While Governor Schwarzenegger has been steadfast in his opposition of rewarding illegal immigration, he disappointed many taxpayers and Californians this year by signing AB 976.

Supporters of the bill contend that collecting information on tenants should be made illegal. This practice, they say, has no place in public governance. The truth is that this is both legal and commonplace.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “The [Fair Housing] Act does not prohibit discrimination based solely on a person’s citizenship status. Accordingly, asking housing applicants to provide documentation of their citizenship or immigration status during the screening process would not violate the Fair Housing Act. In fact, such measures have been in place for a number of years in screening applicants for federally-assisted housing.â€