Lawmakers vow to take up immigration next year

PROVIDENCE - Illegal immigration is one of the most contentious and potent political issues facing the nation this year, but immigration reform bills went 0-for-the-2007-General-Assembly-session.

It wasn't for lack of trying. There was a slew of illegal-alien-related legislation introduced this year and citizens and anti-illegal-immigrant organizations clogged the corridors and hearing rooms of the House and Senate to lobby for the measures, sometimes at lengthy hearings that went late into the night. However, few of the bills made it out of committee and none became law.

Disappointed but undeterred, those lawmakers and supporters vow to return next year to work harder and smarter, redoubling their efforts to prevent those not legally in this country from entering the workforce or joining the rolls of government-provided social programs.

"This will be an even bigger issue next year," predicted Cumberland Rep. Richard Singleton, who sponsored a raft of immigration-related legislation during the session just passed. "And those who are involved will be better organized, better informed, better prepared for the reaction we are going to get and we know how much opposition there is going to be."

Among the bills Singleton championed this year, and which he says will be back in one form or another next year, were measures that would prohibit illegal aliens from collecting unemployment benefits, prohibit the state and other government agencies from contracting with firms that employ illegal immigrants, to make it a felony for state or local government employees to help undocumented persons from receiving benefits illegally, that would require the Department of Corrections to inform ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) of prisoners who are not in the country legally and to deny bail to illegal immigrants, and to prohibit children of illegal aliens from enrolling in public schools.

Noting that some bills ran into trouble because they were incorrectly drafted or had other problems, Singleton said Tuesday, "we're going to make sure these things are written correctly. I want them to be looked at by several attorneys before I put them in the system. We pay a lot of money (getting the bills drafted) - they should be correct when we get them back. "

Singleton, a Republican in the heavily-Democratic assembly, said he also wants to use the off-season to run many of the bills past the leadership of the House and Senate to determine "what things will fly and which ones are completely off the table."
He wants to prevent a repeat of this year, when people gave up their time to sit in packed meeting rooms, sometimes until 10 p.m., to support bills that were destined to never even get a committee vote. "I don't want to put them through that unless there is a chance to get something done," he said. But, he says, "that doesn't mean I won't put (those bills) in again."

One of the people who sat at nearly every one of those meetings until the end is Terry Gorman, head of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Reform (RIILE).
Gorman said he and his group will be back and "we are looking forward to next year with a little optimism.

"Word is getting out about how bad the situation is," he said Tuesday. "We'll be a county in Massachusetts or Connecticut if things keep going the way they are now."

But, Gorman said, he believes that "75 or 80 percent" of the rank-and-file legislators "feel the way we do about immigration issues."
He thinks that leaders in both chambers are blocking many of the measures.

Gorman specifically blasts Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva-Weed for, in his words, single-handedly stopping legislation introduced by Sen. Marc Cote and Rep. Jon Brien, both of Woonsocket, that would have required employers to verify the immigration status of new hires. In a display of tenacity and plain endurance, Brien got the bill passed in the House by a 48-18 margin at just before 3 a.m. on the last day of the legislative session, only to see the Senate refuse to take it up. It was an amended version of the bill sponsored by Cote that never made it out of the Senate Labor Committee.The bill would have required Rhode Island employers to use a system called "Basic Pilot."

The system, already used voluntarily by some employers, allows them to submit to the federal government information they are already required to collect from new hires to determine - usually within seconds - whether the new employee is authorized to work in the United States. All the employer would need is an Internet connection.

Under the system, employers enter a new employee's name, date of birth and Social Security number or immigration documentation into a simple form and submit it via the Internet to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). In 92 percent of cases, employers receive a response within three to five seconds telling them that person's status. If DHS and SSA can't confirm the employee's status and the employee does not resolve the issue within eight workdays, the employer must fire him or her or face fines.

Brien vows to reintroduce the bill "on the first minute of the first day" of the new legislative session, which starts January 1, and hopes to get all 39 of the original sponsors to sign on again, and perhaps all 48 House members who voted for it on the last night.

Asked if it was Paiva-Weed who torpedoed his bill as Gorman insists, Brien notes there were some amendments to his bill that had not been considered by the Senate Labor Committee, so there may not have been time for the committee to consider them.
Paiva-Weed said she considered the bill "divisive," but said that be it Senate President Joseph Montalbano, herself, or any other member, "because one individual senator does not support something, that doesn't mean the bill does not pass."
She said the program would have to be enforced by the Department of Labor and would have required two new employees to do so.

"We're not going to stop fighting," for immigration reform legislation, Gorman said. "We're not going away. We're going to stay riled up."

©The Pawtucket Times 2007

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