Pearce plans to resurrect legislation aimed at illegal immig

Pearce plans to resurrect legislation aimed at illegal immigrants

Posted: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 2:26 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services East Valley Tribune | 7 comments

Unwilling to accept defeat, Senate President Russell Pearce is going to make one last bid to convince Republican colleagues to approve new state laws aimed at illegal immigrants.

But he is scaling back the scope of the attack.

Pearce told Capitol Media Services he will not pursue the more controversial elements of the five measures which failed last month. These include a bid to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants and a proposal to require parents to provide some proof that the children they are enrolling in school are in this country legally.

Also gone, he said, will be a requirement for hospitals to report when people show up for treatment and cannot prove legal presence in this country.

But Pearce said there are "enforcement provisions" in his SB 1611, one of the defeated bills, that he believes can get sufficient support for approval.

One section, for example, would require public housing authorities to evict any family where even just one member is an illegal immigrant. Other provisions would make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to drive a vehicle in Arizona and restrict the ability of those not here legally to register a vehicle.

There also is another bid to deny illegal immigrants admission into any state university or community college.

And he wants a new vote by the end of the month.

At this point, Pearce's efforts to resurrect failed immigration legislation appear to have the backing of Gov. Jan Brewer.

In a separate interview, Brewer said she knows that immigration issues are "of prime interest" to many legislators. She suggests that perhaps they failed because some lawmakers were distracted.

"Their main concern was to get the budget out," the governor said. "Now they've accomplished that. Hopefully I'll get to sign that and we can move forward with whatever they deem is important."

Whether he can get the votes for the scaled-back version of the package remains to be seen.

Pearce has been at the forefront of efforts to use state laws to curb illegal immigration for years. And until now, virtually everything he has proposed, either at the Legislature or on the ballot, has been approved.

All that changed last month, though, when several Senate Republicans lined up with the nine Senate Democrats to kill five separate measures that Pearce had either crafted or supported.

Pearce said he believes colleagues who voted against the measure are mistaken. He said the evidence shows laws aimed at illegal immigrants not only reduce their numbers in Arizona but also make life better for those who have a legal right to be here.

"Nobody talks about a reduction in violent crimes three times the national average," he said. "We know enforcement works."

But he conceded that some of the provisions of his omnibus bill proved too much for some to support.

One particular provision would have required parents to provide some proof of the legal presence of children being enrolled in school.

Nothing in the measure would have stopped a child from going to school even without the documents. But Pearce said it would provide an accurate count of how many youngsters in Arizona schools are illegal immigrants and, by extension, give an indication of the cost.

Pearce said he had an ulterior motive.

In 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools must educate all children who live within the district without charge regardless of whether they are in this country legally. Pearce said one of the reasons the high court decided against the state of Texas in that case was the lack of evidence of the cost to the public.

He argued this measure would have provided the data - and a basis for Arizona to ask the high court to reconsider its decision, potentially letting states exclude illegal immigrants from schools.

Opponents feared that, even with no bar on enrolling children, just the demand for documents might result in parents deciding not to enroll their children, even if the youngsters are legal residents or citizens.

Pearce also said he is particularly "disappointed" that lawmakers will not adopt two separate bills to allow Arizona to challenge the concept of "birthright citizenship."

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that all people born in this country and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are presumed to be citizens. That has been interpreted to grant citizenship to all children of illegal immigrants.

But Pearce said that's based on a misunderstanding.

"There's never been a holding on the 14th Amendment," he said. "It's time to revisit that issue."

The legislation was designed to provoke that court fight. It would have required the state to issue two types of birth certificates, one if at least one parent could prove citizenship or permanent legal residence in the country, and a different one for parents who could not provide such proof.

The presumption is that would lead to a legal challenge, giving Arizona a chance to make its argument about the scope of the 14th Amendment.

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The arguments about immigration laws have reach its course, and should be redirected by persons who are willing and have the ability to assist with enacting laws to get this Country back on track. 2012 will change many things hopefully that have caused many citizens to suffer in the worst kind of ways. Not only are many citizens jobless, and some homeless, they are also being robbed of their tax money to support millions of undocumented aliens, and that action must be ceased as soon as possible.