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Immigration and Security
Influential Texas State Legislator Wisely Kills Anti-immigrant Bills
E.J. Rangel, MATT Contributing Writer
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Something unusual is happening in the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature.
Rep. David Swinford, an ultra conservative Republican who represents part of the Texas Panhandle, the most isolated area of the Lone Star State (where one can drive for as long as an hour without seeing a single home or even a gas station), chairs the influential House State Affairs Committee. This is a nine-member panel assigned to review the pros and cons of about three dozen immigration related bills filed this session.
As chairman, Swinford can decide single handedly whether a bill can be brought up for a vote, and possibly send it to the House floor – or just kill it.
Well, to the dismay of some fellow conservatives, he is killing about two dozen anti-immigrant bills the Texas Attorney General’s office deemed unconstitutional. One of those bills, for example, would deny basic public services such as health care and education to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
Swinford, like Republican Gov. Rick Perry, says there is no point on passing those bills because the courts would strike them down.
“Me, being a right-wing nut I love some of those bills,” Swinford said recently. “But they’re a waste of money. That’s not what I was sent (to Austin) for.”
The Texas lawmaker also believes that even though Washington has done a lousy job protecting the U.S. border with Mexico, illegal immigration and border security are federal issues and it’s useless for the Texas Legislature to pass immigration laws.
So, what he decided to do is draft two House resolutions, which his State Affairs Committee approved, urging Congress to pass immigration reform and border security legislation.
Too bad, other statehouses that have tried to pass anti-immigrant bills don’t have a David Swinford. Just last year 33 states considered nearly 500 anti-immigration bills, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.
Most of those bills went nowhere for the same reason that Proposition 187 went down the tubes in California a dozen years ago: it doesn’t matter whether a statehouse or the voters approve strict anti-immigration laws – if a court says such laws are unconstitutional they can’t go into effect.
The Swinford resolutions are expected to easily pass in the House but the Texas Legislature should go a step farther. It should join forces with other statehouses to pressure Congress and President Bush to work on a comprehensive immigration reform package that would include a guest worker program and would facilitate the legalization of many of the illegal immigrants who are already here.
As Perry and his challengers said in last year’s gubernatorial campaign, it would be unrealistic to deport the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. If a majority of the statehouses spoke with one voice it would be hard for Congress and the White House to put off immigration reform and border security much longer.
Moreover, as Perry has often said and Swinford and his panel heard from some experts, the U.S. government needs to work with Mexico on this touchy issue.
If there is any lesson learned from the amnesty program of two decades ago it is that as long as Mexico – and other Latin American nations, too – remains poor, no matter how tough U.S. immigration laws are, people would keep migrating.
In Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón the U.S. has a partner willing to address this issue because, unlike his predecessor Vicente Fox, Calderón recognizes that as long as his country keeps exporting its most valuable resource – its people – it will remain an underdeveloped nation.
The time to tackle illegal immigration and border security is now because with next year’s hotly contested presidential election already on the horizon, it is unlikely that these issues would even be addressed in 2008. Putting it off for two more years would complicate matters even more.
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