Governor's immigration bill not coming back
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BY JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star
The immigration verification bill, killed in late February by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, was buried Friday, despite efforts by Gov. Dave Heineman and Attorney General Jon Bruning to revive it.
Heineman said in a statement Friday afternoon the continued actions of the Judiciary Committee were “very disappointing.”
“LB963 was about one issue and one issue alone — accountability in government to Nebraska taxpayers,” he said. “The Judiciary Committee’s actions do not reflect the views of the vast majority of Nebraskans who deserved to have had this bill debated by the full Legislature.“
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Another immigration-related bill is apparently alive and moving to the floor of the Legislature.
Revenue Committee members voted Friday to advance a bill that would eliminate tax incentives for companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
The bill (LB784), sponsored by Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha, would allow the state to disallow or recapture tax incentives when a company has knowingly employed undocumented immigrants.
Senators who voted to send the bill to the floor said they don’t expect the measure to get debate on the floor because it is not a priority bill. They said they were moving the bill on as a courtesy to Howard.
Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, who opposed sending the bill out, said the bill “really doesn’t do anything.” But it gives a symbolic victory to anti-immigrant groups, he said.
Howard said she believes the bill assures that employers, who are part of the problem, share in the solution. Employers have a responsibility to make sure they hire legal citizens or people who have documentation, Howard said.
Gov. Dave Heineman has opposed all employer-related immigration legislation, saying employers do not have access to a good database to determine whether people are in the country legally.
But Howard said it is her understanding there is a decent database.
“And this is better than simply saying we will turn our backs (on the employer side of the issue),” she said.
”Nancy Hicks
Omaha Sen. Brad Ashford, chairman of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, said Friday he couldn’t get the five votes necessary to reconsider the bill.
The measure would have required state and other government agencies to verify the legal status of immigrants applying for benefits, contracts, professional and commercial licenses, public housing, food assistance or other assistance. It also would have taken the in-state college tuition allowance from undocumented students who graduated from Nebraska high schools.
Some committee members had said state agencies could do the verification without a state law. They especially were not interested in allowing the in-state tuition allowance to be taken out of state law.
The committee killed the bill on a 5-1 vote. In the eight days after the vote, Ashford talked with the governor’s office, Omaha Sen. Mike Friend and committee members trying to work out a compromise.
Friend, who had named LB963 as his priority bill, said he would not try to take it to the Legislature himself, which would require an affirmative vote from 30 members.
The bill could come back next year, although Friend said he wasn’t sure if he’ll be the person to do it.
There are still practical problems, he said — problems that aren’t going away. Some states — especially some border states — are dealing with illegal immigration in inappropriate ways with criminal penalties, Friend said.
“I don’t think that’s our job,” he said.
Ashford said the state needs to take a more comprehensive approach to the problem, rather than taking it piecemeal. He realizes, he said, the issue frustrates much of the public.
“One lesson here is that the state can do so very little to address immigration,” Ashford said.
He said he can’t believe how the people elected to go to Washington and solve one of the biggest issues of our time have failed. And how people seem to be giving them a free pass on that failure.
The state can continue with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program being used by the state Department of Labor and some sections of the Department of Health and Human Services, he said. The governor has said he needed the bill to get more widespread use of the system.
Heineman and Bruning called a news conference the day after the committee voted to kill the bill and said senators should listen to Nebraska residents on the issue. They urged Nebraskans to contact committee members via e-mail to tell them of their disappointment and urge them to reconsider.
Some committee members said they received a lot of e-mails, but many of them came from people supporting their votes to kill the bill.
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.
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or Canada illegally, does my mere presence give me the right to flout laws? I very much think not. Yet, illegals flout our laws by their mere presence, and the laws apparently give them special favors. "