With feds stuck, states take on immigration

From Stateline.org:

Oklahoma lawmakers signed off on a sweeping anti-illegal immigration law in 2007, responding to the 56,000 foreign-born residents who have come to the Sooner State since 2000 for jobs in meat-packing, construction and service industries. The new measure, which took effect Nov. 1, punishes employers who hire undocumented workers, gives police more tools to start deporting them and denies them state identification and benefits.

“Illegal aliens will not come to Oklahoma if there are no jobs. They will not stay if they don’t have welfare benefits. They will not want to come if they know they can be detained until they are deported,” said state Rep. Randy Terrill (R), the Oklahoma law’s chief proponent.

Several of the states to pass wide-reaching measures to deter illegal immigration – including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma – are new destination states that saw their immigrant population grow by at least a third since 2000.

[S]tates are exploring ways to get involved with what remains primarily a responsibility of the federal government.

State powers to deal with immigration are severely limited by federal laws and court rulings.

While employers are supposed to ask job applicants for a Social Security card or proof they are eligible to work in the United States, a 1986 federal law prohibits states from imposing criminal or civil penalties on employers who hire illegal workers. The one punishment states can mete out is revoking or suspending an employer’s business license. But the question remains how broad that power is.

Six states – Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma and Virginia – passed measures since 2005 to curb the public benefits illegal immigrants can receive, but the federal government keeps their options limited.

Under a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, states must provide free K-12 education to children. “At the least, those who elect to enter our territory by stealth and in violation of our law should be prepared to bear the consequences, including, but not limited to, deportation. But the children of those illegal entrants are not comparably situated,” the five-justice majority reasoned in Plyler v. Doe, which threw out a Texas law that tried to cut off funds for illegal immigrant students.

Federal rules also require free emergency medical care for the poor, regardless of immigration status. Pregnant women and their young children can get healthy food and nutritional information from the nationwide Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program, even if they’re illegal immigrants.

On the other hand, the federal government bars illegal immigrants from non-emergency medical care through Medicaid, which is paid for by both state and federal governments. In fact, since 2006, the federal government requires states to verify the legal residency of all Medicaid recipients.

Illegal immigrants can’t get welfare benefits from Social Security or the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which states administer. And Food Stamps, another federal program administered by states, is open only to poor people who are legal residents.

The situation is more complicated for families in which the parents are illegally here but their children, born on American soil, are U.S. citizens. In such mixed families, poor kids can enroll in Medicaid but their parents can’t.

Federal restrictions, including the Plyler decision, doomed the most famous state effort [California] to cut off public benefits for illegal immigrants.

Only seven states – Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington – allow illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses, but that number is scheduled to drop to six in February, when Oregon halts the practice.