Bills on immigration just fruitless gestures
May 16, 2007
There is another reality at play here. And that is the fact that most of these bills represent futile gestures. If the legislators want to effect change, they should lobby the people who can bring it about — their federal counterparts.
Written by the Editorial Board, San Antonio Express-News
Sen. Leticia Van De Putte (left)
Throughout the nation, state lawmakers are burying their colleagues under a blizzard of immigration bills. Legislators have filed more than 1,100 bills this year, compared to 570 in all of 2005, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bills reflect the growing frustration with the problem, but they also reflect something more disturbing — a sense of futility that has led lawmakers to introduce bills whose only impact will be symbolic. The result is that pandering has replaced honest attempts to effect change through legislation. "States can only do so much," Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, president of the NCSL, said in a statement. "It's like we're trying to scale a 12-foot wall with a step stool. The federal government must fix and fund the problem — now." In Texas, legislators have filled more than 30 immigration bills, most of which would violate the U.S. Constitution, according to Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee. Swinford has already refused to hear one of those bills, a proposal that would have made children born to undocumented workers in the United States ineligible for state benefits. Even the bills that would pass legal muster, however, seem punitive and ill-considered, including one that would prohibit cities from spending funds to build day-labor sites that help both citizens and undocumented workers find jobs. El Paso is one of the cities that has built such a site, the Sin Fronteras labor center, and city officials say the bill would do nothing to limit illegal immigration. "The reality is that's how farms operate (with labor provided by undocumented workers), and they're going to go find those people," El Paso City Attorney Charles McNabb recently told the El Paso Times. There is another reality at play here. And that is the fact that most of these bills represent futile gestures. If the legislators want to effect change, they should lobby the people who can bring it about — their federal counterparts.
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