Immigration would become non-issue under Evanston law
By Deborah Horan

Tribune staff reporter

10:45 PM CST, January 10, 2008

Evanston is poised to approve an ordinance that may make it the first suburban "sanctuary city" in the Chicago area by barring city employees and police from asking about a person's immigration status in most cases.

The City Council's Human Services Committee unanimously approved a draft resolution Monday prohibiting such inquiry unless it is required by law or deemed integral to a police investigation. The resolution also calls on government workers and police to accept a passport or consular card in lieu of a driver's license as proof of identity.

"It's an intent to guide our behavior," said Ald. Cheryl Wollin (1st). "The title of it [includes the words] 'humane and just treatment.' I don't see how anyone can be against humane and just treatment." The resolution is set to come before the City Council as early as February.

The ordinance would anchor the North Shore community at one end of a trend that has seen more and more local governments weigh in on immigration enforcement in the absence of federal reform, analysts said. Municipalities at the other end of the spectrum—including Waukegan and Carpentersville—have moved to help enforce immigration policy and have adopted ordinances that many immigrants believe are aimed at chasing them out.

"You see trends in both directions," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University, a non-partisan think tank. "One trend is the enforcement of immigration law. There's also a trend in the opposite direction, where local authorities and especially police forces say the police should not do it."

Chishti said there is no comprehensive database tracking municipal action on immigration matters, but many major metropolitan areas, including Chicago, have become so-called sanctuary cities—a politically charged phrase that means authorities have directed police and city employees to refrain from asking about immigration status.

Cook County approved a similar resolution last year after a heated debate over whether undocumented immigrants seeking medical care would burden county hospitals, among other issues.

Meanwhile, Waukegan, Carpentersville and Lake County have moved in the other direction, applying for federal training to start deportation proceedings against undocumented immigrants arrested on criminal charges.

"Towns are picking which side they are going to be on," said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that bills itself as an "immigration-reduction organization."

Beck believes cities that pass such ordinances will become magnets for illegal immigrants, who he says will use social services at the expense of legal residents.

"The towns that want to subsidize illegal aliens can, and the towns that don't want to don't have to because they can push the illegal aliens out," Beck said.

Of about a dozen people questioned in downtown Evanston on Thursday, none agreed with Beck's belief that illegal immigrants will drain city services.

Sanctuary cities are mostly symbolic, said David Abraham, professor of immigration and citizenship law at the University of Miami School of Law.

"Local government officials are not immigration officers," Abraham said. "No sanctuary policy that I've ever heard of goes beyond a commitment to follow existing law."


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