Debating the "Reclaim NC" Act

This morning before the NC House Finance Committee, advocates from across the ideological spectrum continued the contentious debate over NC House Bill 786, which would grant limited driver's permits to some undocumented immigrants while aggressively increasing immigration enforcement.

Prominent immigrant rights groups and progressive advocacy organizations continue to approach the Reclaim NC Act from divergent perspectives. The NC Justice Center, COLA (Coalición de Organizaciones Latino-Americanas), and the ACLU denounce "Reclaim NC" as an Arizona-style bill for its enforcement provisions:

Meanwhile, the NC Dream Team and Charlotte-based Jesus Ministry support the measure, maintaining that access to driver's permits represent a vital improvement from the status quo. You can find a live-tweet summary of this morning's hearing, as well as a variety of community responses, here.

A New Direction

NCGA Select Committee Backs Down: Where Do We Go From Here?

We have several other states that I think moved out ahead of their blockers, and probably created as many or more problems than they theoretically fixed, and we can learn from that.

–NC House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Cornelius

Given what happened in the national election and the importance of the Latino vote, there are new cautions in doing anything really radical… This is a pretty reactionary state House and Senate but I still think they see where the bread is buttered nationally.

–Peter Siavelis, Director, Wake Forest University Latin American and Latino Studies Program

North Carolina Republicans’ resounding victories this November, coupled with state GOP lawmakers’ previously expressed desire to pursue harsh anti-immigrant legislation, led many advocates to expect the worst. The state House Select Committee on the State’s Role in Immigration Policy convened last week to issue its recommendations, and several committee members had implied in previous statements that they would seize the opportunity to push an Arizona-style "show-me-your-papers" law. Instead, when co-chair Frank Iler opened by announcing that his committee would recommend no specific legislation, murmurs of surprise arose throughout the packed conference room. The meeting concluded after only five minutes, and the Select Committee report, subsequently made available to the public, offered only these vague, general recommendations for the 2013-14 state legislative session:

• Continue “to review and revise previously introduced” bills.

• Pass resolutions calling on the federal government to enforce border security and delegate wider enforcement authority to individual states.

• Reach out to “entities with economic interest in the issues, such as leaders in the fields of agriculture and agribusiness, construction, hospitality, information technology, and science.”

• Renew “focus on economic development potential… through pragmatic approaches to immigration in this State.”

This turn of events stands in stark contrast to all previous Select Committee meetings, which convened with a far more combative tone. In its very first hearing last December, Iler and company invited Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, whose office was under federal investigation for systematic mistreatment of Latina/o residents, to testify on the federal-local immigration enforcement partnership know as 287(g) (USDOJ has since issued a damning report against Johnson and his department suspended their participation in the 287(g) program).

After witnessing hate-filled, misleading testimony from Johnson and other demagogues, undocumented youth chose to speak publicly and provocatively at the committee’s February hearing:

The video above (taken by Josh Davis, the filmmaker behind The Undocumentary) captures bystanders jeering as Estephania Mijangos, Cynthia Martinez, and Uriel Alberto are ushered out of the committee hearing by General Assembly police. Over and over, onlookers hurl incredulous shouts of “Go home!” at these longtime North Carolina residents who refuse to accept such contemptuous treatment. Ten months later, proud and defiant undocumented voices continue echo throughout North Carolina, while anti-immigrant lobbyists are left to redirect their vitriol toward the lawmakers retreating from their cause.

Still, undocumented youth remain far from celebratory. “North Carolina’s Republican leadership has made an intelligent analysis and appears to be approaching the matter with care,” the NC DREAM Team wrote on its blog, before pivoting quickly to remind readers that the status quo for immigrant workers and families in our state remains incredibly difficult. “However, our state’s leadership remains far from opening its arms to recognize the contributions undocumented immigrants bring to North Carolina.” The DREAM Team highlighted three particularly daunting challenges:

• Out-of-state tuition rates keep higher education out of reach for many undocumented students;

• A statewide ban remains in place on driver’s licenses for undocumented residents;

• Harsh, destabilizing workplace enforcement continues, as seen in mass arrests of migrant workers without criminal records (despite ICE’s official designation of such cases as “low priority” for deportation) as well as new E-Verify requirements passed into law last year.

While many advocates responded with relief to the news that the NCGA will not prioritize Arizona-style anti-immigrant legislation, the DREAM Team rightly points out that we continue to face a status quo in North Carolina that is hostile to migrant families. Energy that might have been invested in fighting new statewide enforcement laws will need to be directed elsewhere, to equally pressing concerns. At the moment, there seem to be two major fronts in this struggle, one much farther from home than Raleigh and one far closer.

In Washington DC, speculation has run rampant since last month’s election that immigration reform will be among the first priorities for the U.S. Congress in its coming session. Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported in some detail on the Obama administration’s planned January push for a comprehensive immigration reform bill. While many lawmakers from both parties remain optimistic that some form of legislation will be enacted in the coming year, the nature of that legislation is far from clear. With so much up in the air, public pressure may yet play an enormous role in determining the final shape of reform.

While far-reaching reform proposals are debated in Washington, however, the mundane details of life continue unabated here at home. As important as broad policy debate remains in the long-term, many advocates and would-be allies are less cognizant of more immediate crises unfolding daily within our own communities. State and local headlines from the past two weeks provide snapshots of the challenges facing North Carolina, as well as the often surprising success with which migrant communities are fighting back:

• Two years ago, Sparta resident Felipe Montes was deported and his two children, both U.S. citizens, were placed in foster care after Alleghany County child welfare officials refused to send Montes’ sons to live with him in Mexico. After a lengthy court battle, District Court Judge Michael Duncan awarded Montes custody of his children two weeks ago. On Wednesday, the Immigration Policy Center published a great guide to recent research that illustrates how common this type of family separation remains.

• Earlier this year in Burlington, single mother Lorena Yañez-Mata found herself facing deportation proceedings as well as criminal prosecution for “obtaining property under false pretenses” after a local Time Warner Cable employee reported her to local law enforcement when she attempted to purchase cable service for her home. This week, Yañez-Mata and supporters rallied to demand relief, catching the eye of local media (see video below). Within a day, she scored two very public victories: Time Warner Cable dropped charges and an immigration judge closed her deportation case.

• Here in Western North Carolina, public campaigns to fight deportation proceedings have been picking up steam over the past few weeks in two separate cases:
• Family and friends rallied last week in front of Senator Kay Hagan’s downtown Asheville office to call on the Senator to support relief for 23-year-old Francisco Hernandez of Marion, whose case stands at odds with the enforcement priorities repeatedly championed by President Obama and his administration.
• November 29 marked the one-year anniversary of a workplace raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at Shogun Buffet and Hibachi Grill on Brevard Road in Asheville. ICE detained twelve restaurant employees that morning, several of whom continue to fight deportation proceedings a year later. Five of these workers filed a lawsuit on the anniversary of the raid, seeking $70,000 in unpaid wages from their former employer [full disclosure: through my involvement in Defensa Comunitaria, I have supported several of these workers throughout the past year as they have sought to fight deportation and tell their stories publicly].

Immigration policy faces an uncertain future with new legislative sessions set to begin next month in Raleigh and Washington, D.C. In the coming weeks, WNC Migration Review will continue to explore the possibility of national reform as well as the challenges facing local immigrant communities in the absence of federal action.

Work, School, and Traffic Stops: Part III

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.

Work, School, and Traffic Stops: Part II

Education at the North Carolina General Assembly

I find it revolting that an American thinks that we should financially support people that cannot legally work in this country through taxpayer subsidized education… If you feel so strongly about this issue find an illegal and pay for their education at a private university.

–NC Rep. George Cleveland (R-Jacksonville)

The bigots and poultry companies have lobbyists and we don’t, so we will walk the halls of the legislature ourselves when we have to.

–Domenic Powell, NC Dream Team

Around the United States, lawmakers have turned to public education in recent years as a proxy to fight policy battles over immigration. In line with this trend, the North Carolina General Assembly debated two bills during its most recent session designed to restrict undocumented children’s access to public education. Immigrant youth across the state spoke out against each, with many publicly declaring their undocumented status and refusing to be intimidated by state legislators. Ultimately, one bill passed only after its most restrictive component was removed, while the other was abandoned altogether. The debate over these two measures holds valuable lessons for those seeking to understand the values at play in public debates over the recent wave of state anti-immigrant laws.

• House Bill 11 (No Postsecondary Education/Illegal Aliens): Stalled in House Education Committee

In early 2011, Rep. George Cleveland filed HB11, a measure that would bar undocumented North Carolina residents from enrolling in the state’s community colleges and public universities. Under current state law, undocumented students are eligible to take classes at such institutions, but they must pay out-of-state tuition (no matter how long they have lived in North Carolina) and may only register after all their U.S. citizen peers have done so.

Cleveland’s inflammatory statements helped to galvanize public opposition to his bill. Within a week, undocumented students and allies gathered at the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville to voice their dismay (see video above, courtesy of the Mountain Xpress). I asked NC House Education Committee co-chair Bryan Holloway (R-King) about the bill shortly thereafter, and he downplayed its significance, assuring me that House Republican leadership did not view it as a priority. For several weeks, students and allies in Asheville and elsewhere continued to publicize the bill and its potentially damaging consequences. Ultimately, Holloway and his co-chair, James Langdon (R-Angier), chose not bring HB11 before the Education Committee for consideration.

• House Bill 744 (Safe Students Act): Passed (Amended Version)

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision established that all U.S. residents, irrespective of national origin or immigration status, have a right to primary and secondary education. Nevertheless, state lawmakers across the nation continue to propose laws aimed at denying this right. In May 2011, NC Rep. Dale Folwell (R-Winston-Salem) introduced one such bill, HB744, which sought to compel public school principals to inquire about the citizenship or immigration status of all new students. Folwell’s proposal came less than a month after the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education issued a memo reminding lawmakers and school boards across the country that asking families about immigration status is against federal law. As has often been the case with such patently unconstitutional measures, Folwell maintained that HB744’s goal was research-oriented. It aimed to determine the cost to taxpayers of undocumented students’ public education, he claimed, not to exclude such students from the classroom altogether. This same reasoning, however, has been used often in other states to justify laws with clear discriminatory effects.

Alabama’s stringent immigration law provides the most recent example. Enacted at roughly the same time the NCGA took up HB744, it contains a strikingly similar provision requiring public schools to report the admission of undocumented students to the state government. When the law took effect last fall, Alabama school districts reported massive, extended absences among Latino students, as parents pulled their children out of school rather than risk exposing their families to potential deportation. The Federal District Court subsequently struck down this provision, and the current school year began with a much higher attendance rate among the state’s Latino students. Alabama continues to wage a court battle seeking the provision’s reinstatement, however, and the bill’s author has spoken very candidly of his ambition for the provision: to provide the template for an eventual Supreme Court challenge, in hopes that the current court will overturn Plyler v. Doe and allow states to deny primary and secondary education to undocumented residents.

Shortly after Folwell filed HB744, the North Carolina Dream Team, an organization composed of undocumented youth from around the state, responded with outrage. Hours before the House Education Committee convened to discuss the bill, the Dream Team issued a press release accusing legislators of “telling undocumented immigrants working and living in our state that they are good enough to pick its residents’ food, but not good enough to sit next to them in class.” Several Dream Team members spoke at the committee hearing, declaring their own undocumented status and noting that they felt attacked by the bill, which they saw as a tool to intimidate and exclude students like themselves.

Rep. Folwell’s anger at the students boiled over in a post-hearing interview. Referring to one outspoken Dream Team member, he fumed: “We just spent $100,000 on that girl’s education and she stood up and said she is illegal. That is the arrogance that we are dealing with – the entitlement.” Shortly thereafter, Folwell confronted another Dream Team member, José Rico Benavides, face to face in the halls of the General Assembly building, angrily claiming that the young man didn’t “have the balls to call me a coward to my face.” Reflecting on the experience this week, Rico Benavides recalled being shocked by Folwell’s behavior, telling me “someone who has that in their heart should not be… in a position with power.”

Ultimately, before sending Folwell’s bill to the full House for a floor vote, the Education Committee removed the provision requiring principals to inquire about immigration status. As the Raleigh News and Observer noted, Folwell’s aggressive anti-immigrant posturing contributed to the forceful blowback that undoubtedly played a role in lawmakers’ decision to scuttle the provision.

You can find WNC Migration Review’s discussion of recent NCGA employment and identification bills in this post, and stay tuned for analysis of recently proposed law enforcement measures.

Work, School, and Traffic Stops: Part I

Two Years of Migration Debates at the North Carolina General Assembly

One week after the coming election, the NC House Select Committee on the State’s Role in Immigration Policy will convene to discuss its recommendation to the full North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) on how to proceed with immigration policy (see this post for background on demographic change and the growth of anti-immigrant politics in North Carolina, including the Select Committee). For all the NCGA’s hostility toward migrants, it has succeeded only once over the past two years in passing into law a bill that explicitly targets undocumented residents. However, several other bills have received extensive debate in Raleigh, and together they paint a picture of the type of legislation that many Select Committee members likely hope to recommend. The immigration-related bills debated during this NCGA session fall generally into four categories: employment, identification, law enforcement, and education.

Employment

House Bill 36 (Employers and Local Government Must Use E-Verify): Passed

House Bill 36 was the only employment-related immigration bill seriously debated during this NCGA session. It also became the only bill aimed at migrants to pass both houses and be signed into law by Democratic Governor Bev Perdue. The law (which, notably, at the urging of North Carolina agribusinesses, exempts seasonal or temporary employees) requires all public agencies and private businesses with 25 or more employees to use the federal E-Verify program to confirm their employees’ citizenship or immigration status.

Identification

·      House Bill 351 (Restore Confidence in Government): Passed Both House, Vetoed by Gov. Perdue

The “Restore Confidence in Government” Act, which would have required all North Carolinians to show photo ID before being permitted to vote, was part of a nationwide trend among Republican-controlled state legislatures inveighing against voter fraud. While the bill did not explicitly address immigration, lawmakers who favor such legislation have suggested that without ID laws, we risk allowing non-citizens to fraudulently participate in U.S. elections. The Immigration Policy Center recently released an excellent roundup of studies that debunk this claim. Federal courts have blocked many of the strict voter ID measures that have passed in other states, finding that they violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act by restricting access to the voting booth for people of color (who are also far more likely to vote for Democrats, a trend which has certainly not escaped the attention of the GOP lawmakers pushing for voter ID laws). Speaking earlier this month in Asheville, Governor Beverly Perdue defended her decision to veto House Bill 351, referring to it as a “voter suppression” measure that would have effectively disenfranchised more than 1 million eligible voters across North Carolina. In contrast, NC House Speaker Thom Tillis met with anti-immigration activists in June to discuss the future of voter ID measures in North Carolina. Later in the summer, he promised that if Republicans remain in power in Raleigh, “we will have voter ID in North Carolina.”

House Bill 33 (Consular Documents Not Acceptable as ID): Passed House, Not Considered by Senate

House Bill 33, which would have barred all NC municipalities from accepting consular documents as valid identification, was co-sponsored by both Frank Iler and Harry Warren, who now serve as co-chairs of the House Select Committee on immigration. The bill was never taken up by the NC Senate and will not become law. However, when considered together with legislation passed in recent years that blocks undocumented North Carolinians from renewing their driver’s licenses, this bill reflects a desire among many NC lawmakers to make it as difficult as possible for undocumented immigrants to legally identify themselves, which substantially increases the risk that any encounter with law enforcement can lead to arrest and subsequent deportation.

Stay tuned for WNC Migration Review's analysis of education- and law enforcement-related bills from this session of the North Carolina General Assembly.

At the Crossroads

Immigration Politics and Policy in North Carolina

Over the past decade, the Latino population has grown faster in the Southeast than in any other region of the country. The two states with the fastest growth rates, Alabama and South Carolina, have also been two of the most aggressive in pursuing legislation aimed at restricting the lives of undocumented immigrants. North Carolina has experienced demographic change in a very similar manner. Latino population growth here outpaced all but five other states between 2000 and 2010. Buncombe, Henderson, and Haywood Counties each saw their Latino populations grow by more than 100%. In 1990, less than 1% of Buncombe and Henderson County residents identified as Hispanic or Latino. By 2011, that share had grown to 10% in Henderson County and over 6% in Buncombe County.

This period of rapid growth in Western North Carolina’s Spanish-speaking population has coincided with a variety of other significant changes. Over the past few decades, rural North Carolina has experience major job losses in the textile and furniture industries, due largely to factory closures and outsourcing. Throughout U.S. history, the anxiety and anger awakened during periods of economic upheaval have often found expression in hostility toward newcomers. Increased immigration to the South has not caused factories to close or jobs to be outsourced. However, as job losses and increasing migration have occurred at the same time, immigrants have often become a convenient scapegoat.

State politicians have proven perfectly willing to trade on the fear of immigrants, both on the campaign trail and in drafting legislation. While the North Carolina General Assembly has not taken up an immigration crackdown on the scale of states like Arizona and Alabama, several piecemeal bills have been passed into law over the past six years that have made certain aspects of undocumented immigrants’ lives more difficult. In 2006, the state passed a law requiring a valid Social Security number to obtain a North Carolina driver’s license. Two separate bills passed in 2006 and 2011 expanded mandatory participation in the E-Verify system for all public agencies and large private employers. In March 2011, North Carolina also became the tenth state to implement the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Secure Communities program in every county statewide. Through Secure Communities, every fingerprint taken by local law enforcement is matched against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database. Since undocumented North Carolinians no longer have access to driver’s licenses, this means that if local police choose to make an arrest for driving without a license, a simple traffic stop can ultimately lead to deportation, even for a long-time resident with no criminal record.

Capitalizing on the momentum of Arizona-style anti-immigrant laws passed in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, last fall the North Carolina House of Representatives announced the formation of a Select Committee to study potential new state immigration laws. Six months ago, as high school senior Juan Ramos stood to testify at a public hearing before that committee, he faced a dilemma that confronts approximately 65,000 new high school graduates across the United States each year. All undocumented students are barred from receiving federal financial aid, and in North Carolina such students are also charged out-of-state tuition, no matter how long they have resided in the state. When Ramos takes his turn at the microphone in the video below, his voice is alternately discouraged and resolute, plaintive and defiant, a paradox that befits the limbo-like status of undocumented young people as immigration policy hovers in uncertain territory. “I’m not afraid of saying that I’m undocumented,” he declares, pausing to collect himself before continuing, “I only ask for opportunities.”



At the conclusion of the public hearing portrayed in the video, co-chairmen Frank Iler of Oak Island and Harry Warren of Salisbury told reporters that the Select Committee would wait for the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration enforcement bill, in order to see which strategies pioneered in other states are viable options for North Carolina, before recommending any new action on immigration policy. Since that day, more than six months have passed, and in June the Supreme Court overturned much of Arizona’s law while letting one of its most contentious provisions stand.

The Select Committee will not meet to discuss its recommendations to the General Assembly until after the election this fall, and neither co-chair was willing to speculate this week about what those recommendations will be. In the past, however, the committee’s leaders have made their personal desires clear. Shortly before the Select Committee convened for the first time, Rep. Iler told his hometown newspaper, the Wilmington Star-News, “we need to make North Carolina as unwelcoming as possible for any illegal alien wherever they come from." Last year, Iler and Warren both served as co-sponsors for House Bill 11, “No Postsecondary Education/Illegal Aliens,” which would have barred Juan Ramos and students like him from attending any community college or public university in North Carolina, even at the higher tuition rates they are currently forced to pay.

The future remains very uncertain for immigration policy in North Carolina, but the events of the past year provide important lessons for lawmakers and concerned citizens alike. Over the next few days, this blog will examine the recent U.S. Supreme Court Arizona v. United States decision as well as the experiences of two states closer to home, Georgia and Alabama, who have recently experimented with harsh immigration enforcement laws modeled after Arizona's. Stay tuned!

Additional Resources

• For more information on demographic change in North Carolina and the growing impact of migration from Latin America on the state, read UNC-Chapel Hill professor Hannah Gill's recent paper for the Immigration Policy Center, "Latinos in North Carolina: A Growing Part of the State's Economic and Social Landscape," or her book, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State.

• To learn more about the experiences of undocumented youth in North Carolina, check out the Al Jazeera documentary The Dreamers.

• The video in this post comes courtesy of NC Policy Watch, whose work I highly recommend for anyone interested in North Carolina politics.