L.A. Votes Against Anti Immigrant Legislation
New America Media, News Report, Kenneth Kim, Posted: Mar 28, 2008
Editor's Note: Pending federal legislation that many perceive as a deportation bill faces steep opposition from many cities, and the nation’s second largest city just joined the coalition of opponents. Kenneth Kim is a reporter with New America Media.
LOS ANGELES -- With praise from Jewish, Korean and Hispanic immigrant rights activists, the Los Angeles City Council, voting 11 to 1, passed a resolution Wednesday to oppose the controversial Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act that would mandate employers to verify the immigration status of workers and require local police to enforce federal laws.
According to the opponents, major U.S. cities including San Francisco, Boston and Chicago already have expressed opposition and are considering adopting a resolution similar to the one passed in Los Angeles.
While resolutions are largely symbolic, many of them may pressure the Congress members representing regions, to think twice on issues, or provide a justification for local authorities to resist cooperating, with the federal government.
“It puts in jeopardy millions of employers and workers who are today acting legally. Among other things, it would take local police away from cracking down on violent crimes and building up a safer community,” said L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti, who introduced the resolution.
The SAVE Act, introduced in 2007 by Rep. Heath Shuler, North Carolina Democrat, would require employers to check both new, and previously hired, employees’ work eligibility by using an electronic verification system. It also advocates levying stiffer penalties for immigration related offenses.
The bill seeks to hire more Border Patrol Agents, federal district judges, and involve local police in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Bill opponents argue that utilizing local police for immigration law enforcement would lead to civil rights violations, put more burdens on already overstretched local police departments, and possibly endanger public safety by eroding the trust between police and the immigrant communities they serve.
The government databases, which would be used to verify the immigration status of employees, are full of errors, they note. Social Security Administration’s records contain more than 17 million errors and Department of Homeland Security’s database is not error free.
Opponents worry that mistakes in the records can create a situation in which thousands of people, including U.S. citizens could be unjustly fired or just waste time, money and energy trying to clear their names.
Like H.R. 4437 (the Sensenbrenner bill) that triggered the historic immigrant rights marches in 2006, they argue that this bill too, is a deportation-only measure and would not resolve problems caused by the nation’s broken immigration system. Considering that 12 million undocumented workers living in the U.S. comprise 5 percent of the work force, deporting all these people is not only impractical, it’s impossible.
“This legislation erodes the very values on which our nation was built,” said Seth Brysk, executive director of American Jewish Committee, Los Angeles Chapter.
As opposition mounts, on March 11, supporters in Congress filed a discharge petition on the bill. A discharge petition is a process in which 218 member signatures are gathered in order to bypass the committee. This is a way to force the hand of House leadership and get the bill to the floor for a vote.
As of March 14, 148 members of Congress across the aisle signed the petition, and the number is expected to grow.
If not checked, there is a real danger the bill could pass, warned the opponents.
“Passing the SAVE Act would further erode America’s economic and community base and will do nothing to solve the nation’s immigration problem,” said Angela Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, before the L.A. City Council passed the resolution, Council President Garcetti, Councilman Dennis Zine, and immigrant’s rights activists held a joint press conference in the City Hall.
They vowed to do everything they could to build pressure on Congress to not pass the bill.
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User Comments
amnestynot on Mar 28, 2008 at 11:55:53 said:
Zine and Garcetti: why not hand the city of to the burgeoning illegal population on a platter....Eventually this legal matter will be addressed and resolved federally.
Meanwhile LA is a sanctuary city with worker fraud rampant and our state in budget free-fall.....Go to any service sector job in town, fradulant new immigrants are effectively cornering our job market out in the open and with impunity! Ultimately, citizen's will remember this City Council decision and its weight on the tax paying citizen.
Dave on Mar 28, 2008 at 08:35:59 said:
The mayor of Los Angeles, along with many city government officials and many lawmakers throughout the United States, see no wrong in pandering to special interest groups. Even though Assemblywoman Mimi Walters, a Republican from Oceanside, said illegal immigrants cost California taxpayers an estimated $9 billion each year.
-->We are not just fighting the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants that are squatting in our country, but fighting powerful influences of the globalist open border, free traders, whose deliberate plan is the free movement of cheap labor throughout this North American Continent. Study the destruction of the identity of sovereign nations in the European Union, that has already commenced and its progressive erosion of U.S. citizen rights that is beginning here. The globalist want to streamline unfettered immigration in America, in a unique way to sell the NAFTA treaty. This is not racism, but pragmatism & common sense! Every industrialized nation has taken steps to end illegal immigration and to limit legal immigration to only that which is prudent, demonstrably necessary, and above all other concerns, in the best interest of their native population. Its insane to suggest that America should not do likewise! We have seen the consequences of balkanization of our own communities, with large and growing population with loyalty to other Nations; the overall decline in our quality of life are the result of unrestrained illegal immigration! America cannot accept the worlds population of other countries.
The illegal invasion can only be understood by the corrupting influence on politicians of money for cheap labor for the Republicans or the Welfare votes for the Democrats that makes them dishonor their Oath of Office, the US Constitution against Invasion, and Enforcement of our Immigration Laws! Powerful forces at work to stop relevant immigration enforcement, that includes La Raza and friends, big businesses, the church machine and other special interest lobby. If we do not fight back now, nothing will stop the ever-mounting greed of the globalist agenda. It will mean continuous stream in the future; an avalanche of cheap workers who will eventually be taking more and more jobs from American workers. TXDOT wants has a plan to construct a NAFTA highway from Mexico to Canada, which is being funded by foreign speculators. Our president is a globalist, who believes in no borders along with many wealthy Democrats and Republicans? Almost every immigration law including the border fence has been gutted by both sides of the Washington aisle.
A final accounting is on hand, before we swear in a new president. All three desire to enact amnesty and allow the 12 to 20 million people who
have broken our laws of sovereignty to stay. If the SAVE ACT is enacted this will demand that all those here without papers must leave. They call this attrition or self-deportation. The SAVE ACT is a by-partisan law is awaiting just 18 signers, to bring this enforcement only to a House vote. The SAVE ACT will supersede any state laws, in its magnitude.
H.R. 4088 can enforce "THE RULE OF LAW"
Keep calling your Congressmen today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-224-3121 AND REGISTER YOUR OUTRAGE at ongoing efforts to keep our country from enforcing its immigration laws!