Thread: Rhode Island Relaxes Immigration Laws

Rhode Island Relaxes Immigration Laws

Updated: Saturday, 08 Oct 2011, 4:54 PM EDT
Published : Saturday, 08 Oct 2011, 4:54 PM EDT

(NewsCore) - In recent months, Rhode Island has been dismantling many of its harsh restrictions on illegal immigrants, including abandoning a federal service that verifies a worker's status and enacting in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants, the Boston Globe reported Saturday.

Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee is also considering allowing driver's licenses for some illegal immigrants in the state, according to the report.

The easing of restrictions in Rhode Island comes as Alabama and Arizona seek to tighten their laws with legislation allowing police to stop and question people about their immigration status.

But since taking office in January, Chafee, an independent and former Republican Senator, has revoked the state police's ability to enforce federal immigration laws. He also did away with a 2008 order that required state agencies and contractors to use E-verify, a federal service that checks a person's eligibility to work in the US, the Globe said.

Chafee's predecessor, Gov. Donald Carcieri, had enacted the strict immigration rules in an effort to reduce the state's illegal immigrants by half, to 20,000 individuals. Carcieri said the illegal immigrants were a drain on state resources.

But Chafee says the policies were ineffective.

"The big thing was that it wasn't working," he told the Globe. "The idea was that it would help us with our economy. It didn't accomplish that."

Instead, Chafee said the policies only served to alienate the state's Latino population, which has grown more than 40 percent in the past decade, according to the Globe.

Chafee's immigration policies face opposition. About 500 protesters rallied at the State House this week to protest a Sept. 26 decision by the Board of Governors for Higher Education to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.

Opponents also vowed to overturn the ruling before it takes effect in September 2012.

Maryland and Connecticut are also now allowing students in the US illegally to pay in-state tuition. The new immigration law in Alabama bars such students, many brought to the country as babies, from state colleges altogether.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpps/news/rhode- ... z1aEiiCqQ7

Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates of any state. The reason that Latinos have moved there is that it is cheap. The reason it is cheap is high unemployment. The people living there legally who come from there can not afford to rent. Bringing in more undocumented immigrants allowing those there to stay increases the Americans level of unemployment.