The Past and Future of Local
Immigration Enforcement in North Carolina
The NC House Select Committee on the
State’s Role in Immigration Policy will convene next Thursday, December 6, to discuss
recommendation to the General Assembly on how to proceed with state-level immigration
laws during the 2013-14 legislative session. Thus far, the Select Committee’s
chairmen have been unwilling to discuss those recommendations publicly. However,
during the current two-year session, state lawmakers (including one Select
Committee member) have filed two immigration-related law enforcement bills.
Both languished in committee, with the full General Assembly never taking
action on either. Nevertheless, in the absence of any statements from Raleigh, these
proposals provide the clearest available picture into North Carolina lawmakers’
preferred approach to migration.
- House Bill 343 (Support Law Enforcement/Safe Neighborhoods Act): Stalled in House Judiciary Subcommittee Since March 15, 2011
- Senate Bill 604 (NC Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act): Stalled in Senate Rules/Operations Committee Since April 19, 2011
The House and Senate proposals each
rest on the same prescription for local law enforcement: more aggressive targeting
of undocumented immigrants and anyone inclined to provide them any assistance.
Select Committee member George
Cleveland, one of migrants’ most outspoken antagonists in the General
Assembly, served as a sponsor of the House version (in addition to three
of the other bills discussed in previous
posts), which borrows its official title as well as most of its provisions from
Arizona’s
controversial enforcement measure. Among other changes to existing state law,
these two bills propose requiring local law enforcement to determine the
immigration status of anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” may be present in
the United States without authorization. This establishes the same standard currently
in effect in Arizona, where community members have begun rigorous documentation
of racial profiling incidents in hopes of another Supreme Court challenge. This
standard would apply to anyone stopped for any reason, including minor traffic
violations. The measures also criminalize the act of “transporting, moving,
concealing, harboring, or shielding” undocumented immigrants. Similar
provisions in other states have drawn outcries from
clergy, among others, who maintain that such laws criminalize faith
communities’ efforts to minister to their communities. In addition, each bill
empowers NC residents to sue city or county officials they deem to be
insufficiently zealous in enforcing immigration law.
Despite chastening national results for
the GOP, this month’s election was wildly successful for North Carolina’s
Republican Party. In addition to regaining of the Governor’s Mansion, Republicans
expanded their majorities in both houses of the General Assembly and maintained
control of the State Supreme Court. In nine days, when the House Select
Committee gathers to discuss an immigration plan for the coming two years, the
consequences of one-party control and the challenges awaiting North Carolina’s immigrant
communities may begin to come into focus.
Additional Resources
- This weekend, the Los Angeles Times published an article examining tension in North Carolina’s Alamance County, where the U.S. Department of Justice has accused Sheriff Terry Johnson of systematically mistreating Latina/o residents.
- The National Immigration Law Center published a report in August detailing the accounts of a few of the 6,000 Alabama residents who had called the Southern Poverty Law Center’s legal hotline in the first few months after the state’s HB56 went into effect.
- In January, Samuel Addy, Director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama, published a cost-benefit analysis of his state’s toughest-in-the-nation immigration enforcement law. Among other conclusions, he found that Alabama could expect to lose 70,000 – 140,000 jobs and between $75 million and $350 million in state and local tax revenue.
