Campaign for Community Change

10/6/06 | Arizona Republic

There are several items on the Nov. 7 ballot regarding illegal immigration. Taken altogether, however, they do not constitute a sensible or effective state strategy for dealing with the issue.

Proposition 100 would deny bail to illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes. This makes sense. People not here legally are a risk to flee or to burrow underground.

Proposition 102 would bar illegal immigrants from recovering punitive damages in civil lawsuits. This makes no sense. Illegal immigrants would still have access to the courts for compensatory damages. That means that the main effect of Proposition 102 would be to allow bad actors to escape the full burden of their misdeeds.

Proposition 103 would make English the official language of Arizona and require that all official action by state and local governments take place in English.

There is a necessary exception for federal requirements. Given how much governmental business the federal government requires to be conducted multilingually, including elections themselves, this measure is mostly symbolic. It wouldn't meaningfully reduce or deter official bilingualism.

At one point in time, an argument could be made that such symbolic gestures by the states were useful in bringing the issue to the attention of the federal government. However, the issue is now fully joined at the federal level. Moreover, Arizona has already done the symbolic bit, having previously passed an official English measure in 1988.

Proposition 300 would make illegal immigrants ineligible for adult education classes, including English literacy programs, child care subsidies, and in-state college tuition or tuition assistance.

The primary criticism has been aimed at the college tuition provisions. Opponents say it is unfair to deny college assistance to kids who were brought here by their parents and don't really have any other home. And it is.

However, it also doesn't make any sense for the taxpayers to subsidize the college education of someone who cannot legally work in the country, much less the state.

Regardless of the merits of the individual items, and even if they all passed, it wouldn't make a dent in the pace of illegal immigration. A few criminal aliens wouldn't slip through the cracks. Life here would be a little tougher for illegal immigrant families. But not enough tougher that the growing pattern of family consolidations would be disrupted.

Truly solving the illegal immigration problem requires, of course, federal action. There are, however, three steps the state could take that would meaningfully reduce the pace of illegal immigration to our state.

The first, and most important, would be to require all state employers to verify work eligibility for all employees through a federal database designed for that purpose.

Whether the state can actually do this is open to question. The federal program for employers to use the database is voluntary. Whether the federal government would accept such a state requirement is unknown and, as best I can determine, unknowable until attempted. Certainly I've failed to get a straight answer from federal officials responsible for the database.

This is the only state employer sanction program, however, that will be effective. Any other proposal simply adds state regulatory harassment to an inherently ambiguous federal process.

The second step would be some sort of state border patrol. It appears, contrary to the claims of some, that bodies on the border do substantially reduce the illegal immigration flow.

The third would be a requirement that local law enforcement stop turning a blind eye to illegal immigration and instead become trained to help enforce federal immigration law. Local law enforcement hates the idea, but it would eliminate the current largely safe harbor that exists if illegal immigrants reach the interior.

The combination of the three would represent a sensible and effective state strategy that would reduce illegal immigration in Arizona, perhaps significantly, even in the event of continued federal inaction.

None of these effective strategies are on the ballot. Critics claim that Republican legislators put the measures that are on the ballot there for political purposes, to put Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is running for re-election, in an illegal-immigration box. There's undoubtedly considerable merit to that claim.

However, in a democracy, politics are how public-policy choices get made. It's just too bad that the choices legislators decided to put to the voters are so marginal rather than meaningful.