IMMIGRATION

The “omnibus” immigration bill, SB 81, Illegal Immigration, by Sen. Bill Hickman, passed after some of this session's most heated debate. In the end, the most important amendment made to the bill was its effective date of July 1, 2009. It will also have delayed $1.8 million fiscal note.

Many independent measures passed by the House were held in the Senate because they were similar to provisions included in SB 81. Two bills that would have repealed in-state tuition and driving privilege cards for undocumented immigrants failed to find support in the Senate, despite both passing the House. Instead, the Senate passed a bill (HB 171, Driving Privilege Card Amendments, by Rep. Brad Daw) tightening the rules for the driving cards and killed outright all attempts to repeal the instate tuition waiver.

SB 81 was modeled after an Oklahoma law that's considered one of the toughest in the nation. However, after several amendments from the House and the Senate, the bill no longer looked like Oklahomas’s.

Here’s what SB 81 contains:

·         requires public employers, and businesses that contract with public employers, to register with and use a Status Verification System to verify the work eligibility status of a new employee

·         makes it unlawful to discharge a lawful employee while retaining an unauthorized alien in the same job category

·         requires the state or political subdivision to verify the lawful presence in the United States of an individual who has applied for a state or local public benefit or a federal public benefit that is administered by the agency or the political subdivision, with exceptions

·         requires an applicant for a state or local public benefit to certify the applicant's lawful presence in the United States, and provides penalties for making a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation in the application

·         provides, subject to the availability of funding, for the establishment of a Fraudulent Documents Identification Unit by the attorney general for the primary purpose of investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting individuals who participate in the sale or distribution of fraudulent identification documents created and prepared for individuals who are unlawfully residing within the state

·         requires the attorney general to negotiate an MOU with the federal government for the enforcement of federal immigration and customs laws within the state by state and local law enforcement personnel

·         prohibits a unit of local government from enacting an ordinance or policy that limits or prohibits a law enforcement officer or government employee from communicating or cooperating with federal officials regarding the immigration status of a person within the state

·         makes it a class A misdemeanor to transport, harbor, or conceal undocumented immigrants for commerical advantage or private financial gain across the state line or for more than 100 miles, knowing that the alien is in the United States in violation of federal law, in furtherance of the illegal presence in the United States

·         requires a county sheriff to make a reasonable effort to verify the immigration status of a confined foreign national, and makes it a rebuttable presumption, for the purpose of determining the grant or issuance of a bond, that a person verified by the sheriff's efforts as a foreign national not lawfully admitted into the United States is at risk of flight

·         provides that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission may not grant a restaurant liquor license or private club license to a person who is not lawfully present in the United States

·         provides for the creation and issuance of identification documents and requires that those identification documents issued by public entities go only to United States citizens, nationals, or legal permanent resident aliens with certain exceptions

Other bills that passed, but were not included in SB 81 include:

·         HB 171, which tightens restrictions on undocumented immigrants' driving privilege cards by making them invalid as age verification for purposes such as buying alochol or firearms. It also revokes cards of uninsured drivers and it prevents issuing temporary driving privilege cards.

·         HB 262, Recovery of Federal Reimbursement for Costs Associated with Illegal Immigrants, by Rep. Karen Morgan, which requires the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel to conduct a study of potential reimbursement from the federal government for state costs associated with illegal immigration.

·         HB 339, Human Trafficking Amendments, by Rep. Chris Herrod, which creates state criminal penalties for human smuggling and human trafficking.

Unfotunately, with just minutes left in the session, HB 490, Legislative Task Forces and Study Priorities, by Rep. David Clark, died. It would have created a legislative task force to study immigration. It died because of contention over an education task force that was also attached to the bill. The immigration task force by itself hadn't been controversial and was a much-touted piece of legislation to complement SB 81. Legislative leaders expressed disappointment but suggested that the issues could be explored in regular committee meetings and that extra meetings could also be scheduled if needed.