Thread: Trowbridge: State immigration bills won’t fix problems

Twenty immigration bills have been prefiled for legislative debate beginning this month. What we will get in Texas is Arizona revisited that is, sound and fury signifying nothing.

An overview reveals that some of the bills have little utility in the larger picture, that a couple are probably unconstitutional and that some have modest utility. The 20 bills can be grouped into five generic categories.

The first category focuses on finding and identifying illegal aliens and arresting them. House Bill 17 echoes Arizona’s SB 1070, where U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton ruled the process of identification as unconstitutional. Her ruling is on appeal.

Even if the identification process in SB 1070 and Texas HB 17 is found constitutional, a much larger problem emerges: only Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have the constitutional authority to deport illegal immigrants.

Last year, ICE deported a record 393,289 illegal immigrants. About 25 percent of those came from Texas. ICE’s goal for 2011 is 404,000.

Texas has vastly more illegal immigrants than ICE can handle. ICE has the budgeting and staffing resources to deport only some 100,000 of the state’s 1.7 million illegal immigrants — a number extrapolated from Department of Homeland Security statistics.

Will Congress allocate huge increases in funding for ICE and for increased border security? The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has pledged to roll back spending to 2008 levels. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says, “Everything is going to be on the table.â€

Anything to make it so miserable for illegal aliens so they self-deport is worth a shot to me.

heck I would pay for a one way revolving door at the border if I knew the illegals would leave via that way.

More bills need to be filed! The more filed, the more likely some of them will pass and withstand the court challenges which are sure to follow from the latino advocacy groups.

Even if the identification process in SB 1070 and Texas HB 17 is found constitutional, a much larger problem emerges: only Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have the constitutional authority to deport illegal immigrants.

What the heck is that supposed to mean. If constitutional, and the illegals are identified and arrested that Customs will not deport them?

Then the state should tell Customs and the federal government, either deport them or move them elsewhere, otherwise we will sue! Get them out of our state!

Oh, by the way, here is the bill for expenses incurred so far!

States need to start playing hardball!

Even if some bills are knocked down by the courts, if we keep pushing more bills some will get put through and will make the illegals finally realize that they are going to be arrested and deported. Latino press keeps making it sound like illegals are going to be protected and will eventually be citizens. We need to change that false reporting. Reclaim border towns that have been taken over by the flood of illegals and where law enforcement has refused to enforce immigration laws.