Thread: NE: Committee has until Friday to decide immigration bill's

Nebraska Judicial Committee has until Friday to decide immigration bill's fate
By JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star
Thursday, Mar 06, 2008 - 12:39:54 am CST

Omaha Sen. Mike Friend prefers to call it sleep mode, rather than death.

But whatever you call it, his bill (LB963) that would attempt to stop illegal immigrants in Nebraska from getting benefits, or in-state college tuition, is still languishing in the Judiciary Committee - waiting to be resurrected, or just buried.

The committee voted a week ago, 5-1 with two not voting, to kill the bill, but members have until Friday to change their minds.

Gov. Dave Heineman and Attorney General Jon Bruning last week urged Judiciary Committee members to reconsider and send the bill to the full Legislature for debate. They also urged Nebraskans to e-mail senators on the committee to tell them of their disappointment and their desire to have the bill discussed by the entire Legislature.

People did send e-mails to committee members, but not just those disappointed by the committee. Many of those communications — as many as half — agreed with the committee’s action to kill LB963, committee members said Wednesday.

Judiciary Chairman Brad Ashford said he will continue to talk to the governor’s office and to Friend until the bill’s fate is decided — one way or another.

Ashford said he was concerned the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) system, used by the state Department of Labor for unemployment benefits, doesn’t catch undocumented workers, but rather those who may have overstayed their work visas.

Friend said he doesn’t know of any failsafe or foolproof method for verifying legal status. If there are errors in the system, that would concern him, he said.

The Department of Labor demonstrated the SAVE system Wednesday for members of the media. The Department of Homeland Security system verifies legal status of immigrants who file for unemployment benefits when agencies enter a person’s alien registration number into the SAVE database.

If the number is not immediately found, said Nisha Avey, supervisor in charge of noncitizen verification, the labor department must attempt a secondary verification and in some cases a third, which can take from a few days to a few weeks.

If a person applying for unemployment benefits says he or she is a citizen, the SAVE verification is not done, Avey said. However, there are more informal checks that are completed as part of processing the application, she said.

Labor Department attorney John Albin said that of the 2,182 unemployment claims last year, 78 could not prove they were legally authorized to work.

Some benefit services in the state Department of Health and Human Services also use the SAVE program.

The error rates of the system, which have been questioned by Judiciary Committee members, are still unclear. Most of the reported error rates involve the E-verify system, estimated by some to be about 4 percent, but both programs use the same database, Albin said. They pull different information out of the database, however, he said.

According to the Social Security Administration’s inspector general, the error rate for U.S. citizens in the database is estimated at 11 percent. Most errors are said to be due to name changes with marriages and data entry mistakes.

One of the problems with errors is the difficulty for those involved to correct them, attorneys say.

Two Judiciary Committee members — Sens. Amanda McGill of Lincoln and Steve Lathrop of Omaha — said Wednesday they are willing to listen to compromise.

McGill said she would like to see a prohibition of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants who graduate from Nebraska high schools taken out of the bill. She was more willing to revisit the vote on LB963 until Heineman called on Nebraskans to e-mail the committee to express dissatisfaction.

“I felt under attack,â€

I can't believe what liers we have in Nebraska politics. What a phone excuse. Now the bill it seems has taken another avenue. It's going after old people in rocking chairs! I wonder if all the other states that passed the bill or are consdering it have thought about this!

Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul said she can’t go along with a reconsideration of the bill because its effects could be too wide-ranging. It could lead, in her view, to compelling elderly Nebraskans in nursing homes to prove their citizenship to get Medicaid, which could be difficult because of the absence of a birth certificate or Social Security card

I see why she has such views. She is from the Grand Island, NE area which is highly agricultural and has several large meat packing plants.

"Member:....Grand Island Chamber of Commerce; Grand Island Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors Club; board of directors, Grand Island Underwriter; Grand Island Area Council for International Visitors; 4-H club leader, Hamilton County; Girl Scout leader; president, Central Nebraska Feeders Auxiliary; coordinator....."
http://www.legislature.ne.gov/web/publi ... s/mcdonald

03/06/2008
Immigration bill likely at end of line
By Leslie Reed , Midlands News Service

LINCOLN — State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha gave up Thursday on trying to revive Gov. Dave Heineman’s immigration bill.


Ashford tried to negotiate a compromise on Legislative Bill 963, even after his Judiciary Committee voted last week to kill it and Heineman refused to budge on his call to repeal a law allowing undocumented immigrants to attend college at instate tuition rates.

Nonetheless, Ashford, chairman of the committee, asked committee members to consider an amendment that would leave the tuition benefit in place. He also proposed deleting a criminal penalty for those who falsely claim to be citizens when they apply for government benefits in Nebraska.

Ashford’s amendment would have retained only the provision that all state and local agencies use a Homeland Security database to verify the legal status of those who apply for benefits in Nebraska.

Several committee members adamantly opposed repealing the tuition benefit, enacted over Heineman’s veto after a hard-fought battle in 2005.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, who spearheaded the committee’s 5-1 vote to kill the bill, said he told Ashford to drop the matter.

Chambers said four veteran lawmakers — himself, DiAnna Schimek of Lincoln, Dwite Pedersen of Omaha and Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul — would not change their votes to allow the bill to advance. Ashford needed five votes from the eight-member committee to resurrect the bill.

Pedersen said he wouldn’t change his mind even if the instate tuition repeal were eliminated.

He said he refused to give the measure his support because it would condone what he termed rude and racist conduct by some supporters of the bill during last week’s public hearing.

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