It has been nearly a year that I heard about Arizona’s SB 1070 legislation and saw firsthand the impact that that yet-to-be-adopted bill would have not only there, but also the entire nation. I remember questioning whether such a bill would have any chance of passing in my home state. Since being signed into law, immigrants, immigration advocates and allies across the country have known that SB 1070 would open up the flood gates to overzealous legislators wanting to be seen as tough on immigration as their Arizonan peers and introduce similar far reaching, attrition-rooted bills in their own states. With the failure to bring home federal legislative victories like the DREAM Act, thanks in part to pusillanimous Senators, and the shift in power in states like my own, a fertile ground has been laid for SB1070 copycat legislation to be introduced and for it to advance farther than in years past. But we won’t make it easy for such hateful, draconian legislation to pass in North Carolina. This is the fight we’ve been anticipating and as my friend Gaby has said, this is “the fight for our lives. And when you’re fighting for your life, you don’t stop until you win.”
On Monday, March 14 House Bill 343: Support Law Enforcement/Safe Neighborhoods was filed in the North Carolina legislature. We see the mastery of messaging at work with the deceitful title in this bill since it aims to relegate anyone who would dare oppose it by making an argument that the individual does not support law enforcement or safe communities. This is by far, the most comprehensive, anti-immigrant bill introduced in the NC General Assembly to date. The biggest problem that I see with this bill–and believe me, there is a lot wrong with HB 343–is that there are too many opportunities for someone in power to abuse their power and for the undocumented community to suffer terrible abuse at the hands of rogue and ill informed individuals. There is also no mention in the bill as to training that agencies, staff and officers would receive in the vein of Immigration 101 or even to determine who is documented and who is not without delving into racial profiling.
This bill would most accurately make life for already strapped law enforcement agencies and officers harder by burdening them with immigration work which would surely distract attention away from keeping all of our communities safe from real threats. We already know that crime rates are lower for immigrants than native-born individuals so going to extreme measures in passing this legislation would misguide valuable and dwindling law enforcement resources. Not only that, but officers would also be burdened with having to determine the immigration status of persons that they stop. Under this bill, “a person is presumed not to be an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency a valid NC drivers license, a NC special ID card, a valid tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal ID.” Law enforcement officers would likely only question brown people and people with accents if they were trying to cut corners, which is racial profiling since they would probably assume that only those individuals could possibly be undocumented. A greater threat to safe communities is that undocumented individuals would fall prey to predators and crimes would go unreported for fear of being deported.
HB 343 is a throwback to the most anti-immigrant, xenophobic legislation proposed in Congress in 2005, the Sensenbrenner bill. They both would require employers to use E-Verify, they both advocate for immigration enforcement to be done at the local/state level, and they both would make it a felony to have certain interactions with undocumented individuals. Under the NC bill for example, a person would be guilty of a Class G felony if they transport, move, conceal, harbor, or shield 10 or more undocumented persons (if an individual interacts with just 1 undocumented person then they would be guilty of Class 1 misdemeanor). If this were law today, I could be a charged with a Class G Felony for transporting undocumented students on a field trip or to church! There is an exception for this section and it applies to “child protective services workers or child welfare services workers, or to emergency medical services personnel, or personnel providing ambulance or rescue squad services, while acting in their official capacity.” In short, you can’t give your undocumented grandmother a ride to the doctor, but at least they’ll allow an ambulance to come pick her up if she’s dying.
A portion of this bill is déjà vu since HB 11 , the Denial of Education bill, was also incorporated within this bill. The sponsors aim to bar access to undocumented students to any institution of high education. There is no mention in this section of the bill as to who would check the legal status of applicants and how those positions would be funded. Denying access to higher education is the same as subjugating a group of people to a lifetime of poverty by limiting their potential. We, the Education State, must stand up for the right of all students to pursue the fulfillment of their highest potential. We can’t afford to deny anyone an education and last I checked, North Carolina didn’t have too many educated people.
Our communities can’t afford for us to derail the work of law enforcement and burden them with the work of federal immigration enforcement. Not only that, but it’s wrong to obligate law enforcement to arrest innocent people who, for various reasons, may be here undocumented and have that person take up a bed in jail. It is wrong to turn a blind eye to frivolous and abusive employers and create a climate where they may thrive by making it difficult for good employers to hire undocumented workers. And it is simply un-American to deny anyone, especially innocent youth, the opportunity to fulfill their God given potential through higher education. It is clear that either the sponsors of this legislation are ignorant to the reality of split-status families or simply don’t care about these families (which encompass U.S. Citizens and undocumented individuals alike), especially with sections of this bill which speak to the transporting and harboring of undocumented individuals.
Times are changing and I remind us all that those US Citizen children and teens who are hearing about these proposed laws that would hurt their parents and separate their families will remember the legislators who stood up for their families and those who didn’t. They will soon come of age and will vote with their families in mind. I know that because I am one of those North Carolinians who grew up in an immigrant household and eagerly cast my vote with my family in mind. It is normal for people to be wary of change and it’s even normal to want to resist change. North Carolina is changing and with the recent census figures, we know that our state will become more brown, as it already has with its Latino population growing 111%. This bill speaks volumes to the status quo desperation of those of a certain generation who have found a scapegoat in the new immigrant population. This bill is clearly an attempt to try to make life for undocumented immigrants so awful in North Carolina that they pick up and leave our state. But it is time for North Carolinians to say no more hate in our state! Our soil is still damp from the long, fought battles for the opportunity for black and white to stand and fellowship together and we simply can’t and shouldn’t wage another attack on fellow human beings. We all know what the right thing to do is and it is to oppose HB 343. This bill is a waste of valuable and limited resources, it goes against our American values and history as a nation of immigrants and appeals to the worst in us. No Hate in Our State!
I challenge you to tell at least one person in your life about this bill (after you’ve read up on it or shared this blog post) and keep tuned in for more info which will surely follow in the next few days. If you’d like to join in on lobbying efforts against this bill send me an email so that I may connect you to groups undertaking those efforts. irene@irenegodinez.com.
THANK YOU!
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