State lawmakers target immigration issues for funding
June 15, 2008 - 6:51PM
By Barry Smith / Times-News
RALEIGH - With the immigration issue unsettled in Washington, the debate over how immigrants should be treated continues in state capitals, including Raleigh.

Bills dealing with illegal immigration have been introduced in the General Assembly, and one group fighting illegal immigration plans a rally in the capital on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, efforts to come to terms with immigrants in the country illegally and residing in North Carolina continue.

A provision in the House budget, adopted earlier this month, would provide $1 million to assist sheriff's departments across North Carolina that want to participate in an immigration enforcement program commonly known as the "287(g)" program.

That program, currently in effect in Alamance, Gaston and Mecklenburg counties, allows deputies to check the residency status of people arrested on certain charges. If the deputies, in working with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, determine that the people arrested are not in the country legally, they can be bound over to ICE officials.

"The $1 million is probably too much," said Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, who co-chairs a subcommittee dealing with justice and public safety spending. She said that money not used by the sheriff's association over the next year would revert back to the state.

William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), said the money would help local law enforcement agencies wanting to enforce immigration laws.

"Some sheriffs say they don't have the money to allocate to this," Gheen said.

Tony Asion, executive director of El Pueblo, an organization advocating for Latino rights, questioned the use of tax money to reimburse deputies for training in the 287(g) program when the federal government said there is a backlog in such programs.

Gheen said that ALIPAC is hoping to defeat attempts to derail such programs and to bar illegal immigrants from receiving any taxpayer resources from the state other than those that are federally mandated, such as kindergarten through 12th-grade education and emergency medical care.

"No college, no license, no voter registration, no welfare, no food stamps," Gheen said. "We have to demagnetize North Carolina."

Gheen suggested that tougher immigration enforcement laws recently passed in South Carolina will likely prompt illegal immigrants to move from that state into North Carolina.

Asion said that political considerations are behind a lot of the tough enforcement laws being hammered out in state legislatures.

"Part of what we're trying to do is get them to do what is right and not what is politically correct," Asion said. "They're only doing that because the majority of the Latinos in North Carolina are not eligible to vote."

He said that many can't vote because they aren't citizens or are not yet old enough to vote.

"Legislation keeps getting thrown around for the purpose of people saying, ‘hey I've done this against immigration and consequently you should vote for me,'" Asion said.

Gheen hopes that lawmakers will approve a bill that would require local governments and businesses that contract with state and local governments to get all new hires cleared through an "e-verify" database to make sure they're legally in the United States.

Asion said that would work great if the e-verify system were dependable.

"It's relatively bogged down now," Asion said. "It's really not a reliable system. The system was not actually designed to check out everybody in the country. It's not capable of doing that."

Also, competing bills would either prohibit illegal immigrants from enrolling at the state's universities and communities or would allow them to do so.

And Gheen said he would like to see El Pueblo prohibited from receiving any state funds since the organization lobbies before the General Assembly.

"They're the biggest pro-illegal alien front in the Legislature," Gheen said.

Asion said that while his organization does receive grants, none of the money is used for lobbying.

El Pueblo gets money for education programs encouraging people not to drink and drive, use child safety seats in autos and fasten their seat belts, Asion said.

"We have reduced DWIs among Latinos over the last few years by 20 percent," Asion said. "Absolutely none of that is used for lobbying."

Barry Smith can be reached at bsmith@link.freedom.com

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