Cynical politics behind anti-immigrant bill trump the common good
An immigrant family wades through the Rio Grande while crossing from Mexico into the United States on September 30, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
As you may have heard by now, a bill currently making its way through the North Carolina legislature (House Bill 10 – Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE) is the subject of significant controversy. The bill would require county sheriffs to hold people they arrest at the request of federal immigration agents.
Many sheriffs, however, do not want to do the job of the federal government. They see immigration enforcement as a federal issue. For their part, they want to provide safety and protection to all local residents and to avoid, where possible, separating families unnecessarily.
Sadly, this is far from the first time such an issue has arisen at the General Assembly. Indeed, let me tell you about a bill from a few years’ back that helped start this anti-immigrant mess in our state. I was there. I lobbied against it, and it is just as hateful now as it was then.
History is instructive. There is very little that is new under the sun if one studies history. Anti-immigrant fervor has always been a hallmark of American history. One just needs a scorecard and a calendar to keep track of which ethnic group, nationality, or religion the hatred and bigotry was aimed at.
In 2005, I was the first paid contract lobbyist at the General Assembly for the Raleigh-based nonprofit, El Pueblo. At the time, we had high hopes for passing some forward-looking legislation, including a proposal that would have granted the children of immigrants access to in-state tuition rates when they attended public colleges and universities. We had a lively and positive news conference in the Press Conference Room in the Legislative Building to promote the bill. There was a big crowd with many legislators in attendance, that was headlined by none other than the former Governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt.
We had barely left the event, however, when the phones began to ring off the hook in the offices of legislators due to calls from angry North Carolinians. Legislative assistants were spoken to in unforgivable ways, and ultimately, they had to stop answering the phones. The offices of El Pueblo had to be locked and a security system was installed. The Executive Director was forced to hire a bodyguard.
One day, I brought the Consul General of Mexico — an ambassador-level official — to a legislative committee meeting where he was, absurdly, accused by a lawmaker of traveling around North Carolina to register non-citizens to vote. Meanwhile, the chair of the committee sat idly by and said nothing.
This offensive and horrible behavior went on all session.
In the next legislative session that commenced in 2007, HB 1950 – Sheriffs Immigration Enforcement Agmt./Funds. was introduced. This was the beginning of the 287(g) program, which allowed the Sheriffs Association to collect funds for each immigrant they would arrest and detain in their jails. It was nothing but a money-making scheme. Never mind the harm it would do to families and children.
Sadly, just as it did in 2007, the state Sheriffs Association is backing HB 10 in 2024. Only this time, it has the full cooperation of legislative leaders.
Of course, the ultimate tragedy here is that it’s all so unnecessary.
Republicans had a golden opportunity to solve “the border crisis” earlier this year – a problem they have stood in the way of solving in Congress for the last 30 years. They helped write a bipartisan bill, to which Democrats agreed, that would have strengthened immigration enforcement while providing a realistic path to legal status for many longtime immigrants and helped bring them out of the shadows.
Unfortunately, that kind of plan didn’t mesh with Donald Trump’s scheme to base his fall campaign on racist and fear-based appeals and to deny any kind of victory – even one that would greatly benefit the nation as a whole — to President Biden, so he told the Republicans in Congress to back out of the deal.
In short, as has been the case in North Carolina on this issue for many years, cynical and petty politics waged by petty politicians remain, for now, triumphant. And it’s a sickening sight to behold.
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