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 News from Around the Americas | September 2007 
Oklahoma Law Puts New Focus on Immigration
 Laura Kellams - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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 |  | They realize they’re not wanted here, and they have a risk of being arrested and deported. The ones I’ve spoken to are going back to their country.
- Marcela Frescott, Hispanic Helping Center |  | |
The sponsor of Oklahoma’s sweeping new immigration law said he hopes the get-tough measure inspires his state’s illegal alien population to pack up and move somewhere else — somewhere like Arkansas.
“I hope we export every illegal alien to surrounding states,” Oklahoma state Rep. Randy Terrill said in an interview last week, “if their state legislators don’t have the backbone to fill the void left by the federal government.”
That’s what some Northwest Arkansas lawmakers say they worry about, the reason they want to study the impact of immigration here with the idea of passing something like the Oklahoma law.
The law calls for more local enforcement of immigration laws, further restricts state issuance of identification and benefits and aims to crack down on harboring and hiring illegal aliens, among other restrictions.
Supporters and opponents say anecdotal evidence suggests that some of Oklahoma’s illegal residents are leaving in anticipation of the law taking effect Nov. 1.
But Marcela Frescott, a group leader at Hispanic Helping Center at Catholic Charities of Tulsa, said her clients tell her they’re not heading to another state. They’re heading home, mostly to Mexico.
“They realize they’re not wanted here, and they have a risk of being arrested and deported,” Frescott said. “The ones I’ve spoken to are going back to their country.”
With increasing worries that local police will pull them over and they’ll end up deported, they’d rather cash in equity on their houses now and leave on their own terms, she said.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t leave, ’” Frescott said, “but they’re afraid.”
Terrill, a Republican from Moore, Okla., said such departures are just what he aimed for when he sponsored the bill that became the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007. Organizations that want more government immigration enforcement have hailed the law as the nation’s toughest.
Some think it goes too far, however, and are ready to sue to stop its implementation. The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, based in Washington, D. C., is behind plans to file a lawsuit this month to have the law thrown out on the basis that the state is trying to overstep its authority.
The Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the organization, said the law is frivolous.
“This is such an absurd way to deal with the issue. It’s a waste of taxpayer money,” he said.
Rivera said he’d advise against Arkansas lawmakers enacting similar legislation.
“The best message we can send to the people of Arkansas is: Bring this message to your congressmen. Don’t waste taxpayer money trying to get something like this, which will lose in court,” he said.
Rep. Rick Green of Van Buren, one of the Arkansas lawmakers studying the effect of immigration, said his constituents don’t want to wait for Congress after two consecutive years of failures to pass measures at the federal level.
He said he doesn’t know if Arkansas should pass legislation just like Oklahoma’s wide-ranging act. But the state should get serious about its own role in immigration enforcement, he said.
“What we don’t want is Arkansas to say, ‘ Come here. It’s a safe haven because we don’t take the law seriously like Tennessee and Oklahoma and Georgia, ’” Green said.
A new Tennessee law calls for temporary suspension of business licenses for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.
Last week, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt directed state law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of everyone they arrest and said the state would tighten oversight of contractors’ hiring practices.
Many other states, far from the border, enacted laws this year dealing with immigration concerns. Legislatures considered 1, 404 measures and enacted 170, according to a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Arkansas Legislature passed a law sponsored by Green meant to discourage state contractors from hiring illegal aliens. Lawmakers rejected a bill by Rep. Jon Woods of Springdale to allow state arrests for harboring illegal aliens.
Green, Woods and Sen. Ruth Whitaker of Cedarville, all Republicans, are sponsoring a legislative study of the effect of immigration on the state and taxpayers. Last month agencies reported that education and imprisonment expenses totaled about $ © million, including costs of services to legal immigrants.
A study released in April by the Urban Institute, funded by Arkansas’ Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, reported that immigrants and their children have a small but positive net fiscal impact on the state budget. The study found that the state spent $ 237 million in 2004 on education, health services and corrections for immigrants but took in $ 257 million in tax revenue from the same population.
It reported that immigrants directly and indirectly generate almost $ 3 billion a year in business revenue. It also noted that among the state’s estimated foreign-born population of 101, 000, half are here illegally.
Woods said he wants to learn more about how much income immigrants are sending out of Arkansas in the form of remittances to their home countries, and he said that will be part of a report at the second hearing in the legislative study, scheduled for Sept. 18.
Green said he’d be surprised if people who leave Oklahoma aren’t moving to Northwest Arkansas to work in construction or poultry plants.
Archie Schaffer III, a senior vice president for Springdalebased Tyson Foods Inc., said the company hasn’t seen any influx of workers in recent months and doubts any state legislation would have such an effect.
“As a matter of fact, we currently have several hundred open positions in western and northwestern Arkansas,” he said.
Schaffer said the company believes that immigration issues are best dealt with at the federal level and he hopes that Congress will pass comprehensive immigration changes to slow down the move in legislatures to pass individual state laws.
School administrators also say there’s no measurable evidence of any influx of immigrants. Northwest Arkansas districts have seen slower-than-usual growth in enrollment this year, and a slowdown continues in the region’s housing industry.
In the first week of school, the Springdale School District, which has the highest number of English-language learners in the state, had grown by 272 students over the year before. This time last year, the growth was 1, 040 over the year before.
“I don’t see any influx coming from Oklahoma or anywhere,” said Hartzell Jones, deputy superintendent.
Rivera said that immigrants are leaving Oklahoma or at least lying low in anticipation of the new law. He said he preached in two Hispanic churches last weekend in Tulsa that have seen their membership drop 25 percent to 30 percent.
Ana Hart, executive director of Just Communities of Northwest Arkansas, said she has serious doubts that those people, if they’re really leaving Oklahoma, are heading to Arkansas.
“We couldn’t miss that if it was happening,” said Hart, a Mexican immigrant who now heads the organization formerly affiliated with the National Conference for Community and Justice.
Hart said she likes it that state lawmakers are studying the immigration issue before making any decisions on legislation. The study should take into account the economic future of the state and should be devoid of the passion that comes from both sides in the debate, she said.
“What we have advanced in race relations, would this be a step forward or backward ? Would the economic viability of the state be improved or impacted negatively ? Those are honest questions we need to ask,” she said.
Rivera said he’s concerned about the participation of Oklahoma police agencies in a federal immigration enforcement program, the same program that Northwest Arkansas law enforcement agencies hope to join.
“They become a de facto federal agency, and the only tool they will use is racial profiling,” Rivera said.
Terrill said the law is “nationality neutral,” however, because it relies on federal databases for checks of immigration status.
“The computers don’t care what your skin color is or what your accent is. All they care about is if you’re here legally,” he said.
Frescott, who works with Hispanic families in Tulsa, said the general atmosphere has changed noticeably in the last year or so. She said she’s been a U. S. citizen since 1982 but notices recently more disapproving looks if she speaks Spanish in public.
“My feelings are hurt,” she said. “There’s thousands of us here in Oklahoma feeling kind of unloved.” |
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