Oklahoma's crackdown on illegal immigration draws Texas lawmakers' interest
Crackdown on illegal immigration draws criticism, Texas interest
11:31 PM CST on Wednesday, February 13, 2008
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
OKLAHOMA CITY – Welcome to the nation's laboratory for a crackdown on illegal immigration. Last year, Oklahoma's Legislature passed, by huge margins, the nation's toughest law on illegal immigrants, making it a felony to harbor, transport, shelter or conceal undocumented immigrants.
This summer, the same law also will allow U.S. citizens to sue employers if they think they were fired in favor of illegal workers. Employers in the state say they already see the results: "A total lack of workers," said Doug Forrest, a Tulsa site-preparation contractor and golf course builder. "This is potentially sending our state into a recession."
Proponents of the law don't see such economic harm.
Meanwhile, some Texas lawmakers are already promising bills that mirror Oklahoma's House Bill 1804.
State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, said the Oklahoma measure has proved that even as Congress deadlocks on immigration, a state can protect itself against what he calls threats to public health and safety posed by a porous border.
"You don't have to round up 20 million illegal aliens," Mr. Berman said. "Stop the two free benefits you're giving them – free health care and a free education – and they'll go back across the Rio Grande."
Mr. Berman has introduced similar anti-illegal-immigration measures in the past but has been unsuccessful.
In December, Oklahoma Treasurer Scott Meacham said "some short-run pain" to that state's economy might occur, if reports of temporary labor shortages in construction, agriculture and oilfield services industries proved severe and long-lasting.
On Wednesday, Meacham deputy Tim Allen said there's been no clear trend to sales tax collections. In October, they dipped below expectations, then hit an estimate on the nose in November, rose in December and flopped again last month. Mr. Allen said that while growth of income taxes has slowed, that could be in line with the national economy.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several Oklahoma business groups recently sued to overturn the law, saying it improperly steps on federal government turf.
Only one group has tried to track the law's effects on population. The Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, after checking with schools, churches, and bus lines with service to Mexico, estimated that between 15,000 and 25,000 illegal immigrants have left Tulsa County since the law was passed.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there were between 50,000 and 75,000 illegal immigrants in Oklahoma nearly two years ago, with 20 times more – as many as 1.6 million – in Texas.
Jean Towell, leader of a Dallas group fighting illegal immigration, said she's spoken with five North Texas House Republicans who "are planning, as they said to me, to two-step with Oklahoma."
Two of them who could be reached Wednesday, Reps. Jim Jackson of Carrollton and Linda Harper-Brown of Irving, confirmed that they will be joint sponsors with Mr. Berman. A third, Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, R-Parker, said she hasn't seen particulars and won't commit yet, though she has "positive" feelings about the proposal.
However, Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, said it would be "unfair to punish employers in Texas for the failure of Congress to act" on immigration.
"We would, of course, oppose any effort on the part of the Legislature to make immigration a state issue," said Mr. Hammond, whose group helped the GOP capture control of the Texas House in 2002. "It's a grave mistake for them to do so."
Rep. Rafael AnchÃa, D-Dallas, who joined forces with Mr. Hammond and others last year to quash bills discouraging illegal immigration, said this year's presidential race should discourage the Texas Legislature from following Oklahoma's lead next year. He said GOP voters rejected their party's hard-liners on immigration, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Also, 36 percent of Texas' population is Hispanic, compared with only 7 percent in Oklahoma.
Groups of Hispanics and civil libertarians also have gone to court trying to nullify the Oklahoma law, so far unsuccessfully. The state's Latino leaders say the law has spread fear and led to the death of at least one infant because his parents were afraid they would be deported if they took him to a clinic.
The law strongly nudges local and state police to help enforce federal immigration laws and requires state and local governments to determine whether someone is in the country legally before dispensing public assistance. Some exceptions are made, such as for emergency medical care. A final portion of the law goes into effect July 1, requiring private companies to verify the employment eligibility of all new hires.
"The fear, the terror, is pushing people further underground," said Patricia Fenell, who runs the Latino Community Development Agency, a Hispanic social services center on Oklahoma City's south side.
Alma Montez, who illegally migrated from Mexico a decade ago with her husband, is wary. She said her husband, who lost his $19-an-hour job as a welder about the time the law took effect, has had to take a lower-paying job. He fears that she and their six children will be caught and deported while he's at work, Ms. Montez said.
"My son told me, 'Mommy, what happens if I stay in this school and the immigration take my Papi and you? What am I to do?' " she said. "I say, 'I don't know.' "
State Rep. Randy Terrilla Republican from the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, , wrote the law. He conceded last week that family breakups will be wrenching, but said bad things also happen to relatives of other people who break laws, such as burglars.
"Somebody's decision to commit a crime ... frequently has an adverse impact on one's family," said Mr. Terrill, a lawyer and part-time government professor at Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College. "We don't use that as an excuse not to enforce the law."
But [OK] state Sen. Harry Coates calls Mr. Terrill "a mad scientist, and Oklahoma is his laboratory."
Mr. Coates of Seminole, an hour east of Oklahoma City, was the Legislature's sole Republican to vote against the bill. He said it is mean-spirited, hurts business, and inconveniences legal residents, especially elderly drivers who forget to renew their license and then must produce a birth certificate.
Mr. Terrill said recent state administrative changes should eliminate delays in renewing licenses.
Several Christian denominations have said they'll continue to urge parishioners to aid strangers, even though the law threatens those who transport or shelter "aliens" with at least one year in prison and/or at least a $1,000 fine.
In November, messengers to the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma passed a resolution saying the law "will not change their ministry to any people," according to the Southern Baptist group's Web site.
Mr. Terrill said he doubts courts will convict anyone acting on altruistic motives.
He cites polls showing that as many as three out of four Oklahomans support the law. He predicted it will survive attempts to repeal it during the current session of the Oklahoma Legislature, which ends in May.
Mr. Coates conceded that passing a full or even partial repeal this session "is going to be an uphill fight."
One reason is people like Dan Howard, a Tulsa aircraft dealer.
"People up here got scared to death because ... crime went through the ceiling," said Mr. Howard, who founded an anti-illegal-immigration Web site. "We just want rule of law."
Oklahoma gets tough on illegal immigration
Last year, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a law that:
•Restricts illegal immigrants' access to driver's licenses and ID cards.
•Cuts off several forms of public assistance for illegal immigrants. Emergency medical care, disaster aid and certain immunizations are exempted.
•Makes it harder for illegal immigrants to pay in-state college tuition.
•Encourages state and local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law.
•Makes it a felony to harbor, transport, conceal or shelter illegal immigrants.
•Requires state and local governments to use a federal database that allows them to check potential employees' work eligibility.
•Starting this summer, private employers and government contractors will have to verify employment eligibility of all new hires. Employers who don't could be sued.
This year, Oklahoma lawmakers are considering bills that would:
•Designate English as the state's official language.
•Let law enforcement seize the property of those who transport, hire or rent to illegal immigrants.
•Make public schools report how many illegal-immigrant children are enrolled.
•Repeal last year's law.
•Repeal all of last year's law, except for its ban on most public benefits.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
THE FIGURES
Oklahoma's get-tough law on illegal immigrants.
1804
The omnibus anti-illegal- immigration law is called this because it was a House bill with that number in last year's session of the Oklahoma Legislature
88-9
Margin by which the bill passed in the initial vote by the GOP-controlled Oklahoma House
41-6
Vote to pass the law in the state Senate, which is split evenly, 24-24, between Republicans and Democrats
0
Number of news organizations' cameras present last May when Democratic Gov. Brad Henry signed it into law
0
Number of mentions of the law in Mr. Henry's State of the State address last week
15,000-25,000
The Greater Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's estimate of how many illegal immigrants have left the Tulsa area, where enforcement has been most strict, since the law took effect Nov. 1.
February 13, 2008
February 11, 2008
Fowl Play
Fowl Play
Christopher Helman 02.11.08, 12:00 AM ET
Chicken king Bo Pilgrim wants immigration reform. First he might keep an eye on his own coop.
Feathers are flying at Cluckingham Palace, the Pittsburg, Tex. mansion of Lonnie (Bo) Pilgrim. The 79-year-old founder and chairman of Pilgrim's Pride (nyse: PPC - news - people ), the nation's biggest chicken processor ($7.4 billion sales), had barely caught his breath following the sudden death in mid-December of Chief Executive O.B. Goolsby, when he faced a fresh crisis. On Jan. 8 a federal grand jury returned indictments against 20 Pilgrim employees. (No one has yet entered a plea.) Five people have been charged with peddling stolen Social Security numbers and forged documents to illegal immigrants looking for work at one of the company's slaughterhouses, in Mount Pleasant, Tex. Says Alan Jackson, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the suspects, "Identity theft is what makes the case."
But the immigration angle gives it a special irony. For years Pilgrim has been outspoken about how vital migrant labor is to his business. In 1996 he told the Dallas Morning News, "God wants poor people to have jobs." A decade later he told the same paper, "We're not looking for cheap labor. We're looking for available labor. … How many people can you get to squat down and catch chickens?"
A lot. Pilgrim's 55,000 workers kill, pluck, chop and pack 44 million chickens a week at its 37 factories. In the interest of keeping a steady supply of workers, last year Pilgrim founded Texas Employers for Immigration Reform with owners of a dozen agriculture and construction businesses. "You won't have to build a wall if you have a good guest worker program," says William Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business.
Separate from the criminal complaint, a Labor Department investigation uncovered discriminatory hiring practices at Pilgrim's Dallas and Nacogdoches, Tex. plants. The company denied all wrongdoing but signed a consent decree in September, agreeing to pay $1 million and hire 63 non-Hispanic females, 100 Hispanic females and 198 non-Hispanic males who met all job qualifications but had been rejected in favor of Hispanic male applicants.
In April 2007 the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security began its investigation into Pilgrim's Mount Pleasant factory after receiving 76 calls complaining that the company was knowingly hiring undocumented workers. Undercover agents and informants posing as illegals say they penetrated a ring of identity thieves and document peddlers at the plant. According to ICE, Daniel Totosaus-Rodriguez had been working at the plant for a year, making $440 a week under the stolen identity of one Alberto Morales and claiming to be involved in the narcotics trade in Mexico. He and his accomplice Marcos Garcia allegedly sold agents sets of false documents for $1,100 that they guaranteed would be good enough to get a job at the plant--or they'd replace them for free.
Why so confident? They allegedly had an inside connection. Reyna Villarreal, the aunt of Garcia's wife, was a hiring manager in the plant's personnel office. ICE officials charge that Villarreal took a $500 bribe to hire the undercover informant brought to her by Garcia and that they had similarly given jobs to more than a dozen other identity thieves. What's curious is that Villarreal was working there at all. ICE agents discovered that she got her first job with Pilgrim's Pride in 2000 under the name Reyna C. Aleman, using a Social Security number stolen from an Ohio man; she falsely claimed (under penalty of perjury) on employment forms that she was a U.S. citizen. Then in October 2002, says ICE, Reyna Aleman resigned from Pilgrim's Pride, only to be rehired the next day to the same job as Reyna Villarreal, with a different Social Security number. On her application she claimed she had not worked at Pilgrim's Pride before.
That evidently didn't bother her supervisor, Hope Anguiano, who in 2003 wrote an internal memo explaining that Aleman/Villarreal had previously worked for the company under a different identity, according to ICE. Pilgrim's Pride also notarized Villarreal's employment documents and submitted them to the Immigration & Naturalization Service. When the case comes to trial later this year, Villarreal faces as much as 20 years in prison, according to prosecutors.
During the investigation last summer Pilgrim's Pride fired 100 or so workers at Mount Pleasant for having "bad papers." The company says it continues to improve its hiring practices and always checks the authenticity of Social Security numbers used by applicants. Culpability, apparently, doesn't affect the pecking order: So far no executive at the company has been called to account.
Christopher Helman 02.11.08, 12:00 AM ET
Chicken king Bo Pilgrim wants immigration reform. First he might keep an eye on his own coop.
Feathers are flying at Cluckingham Palace, the Pittsburg, Tex. mansion of Lonnie (Bo) Pilgrim. The 79-year-old founder and chairman of Pilgrim's Pride (nyse: PPC - news - people ), the nation's biggest chicken processor ($7.4 billion sales), had barely caught his breath following the sudden death in mid-December of Chief Executive O.B. Goolsby, when he faced a fresh crisis. On Jan. 8 a federal grand jury returned indictments against 20 Pilgrim employees. (No one has yet entered a plea.) Five people have been charged with peddling stolen Social Security numbers and forged documents to illegal immigrants looking for work at one of the company's slaughterhouses, in Mount Pleasant, Tex. Says Alan Jackson, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the suspects, "Identity theft is what makes the case."
But the immigration angle gives it a special irony. For years Pilgrim has been outspoken about how vital migrant labor is to his business. In 1996 he told the Dallas Morning News, "God wants poor people to have jobs." A decade later he told the same paper, "We're not looking for cheap labor. We're looking for available labor. … How many people can you get to squat down and catch chickens?"
A lot. Pilgrim's 55,000 workers kill, pluck, chop and pack 44 million chickens a week at its 37 factories. In the interest of keeping a steady supply of workers, last year Pilgrim founded Texas Employers for Immigration Reform with owners of a dozen agriculture and construction businesses. "You won't have to build a wall if you have a good guest worker program," says William Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business.
Separate from the criminal complaint, a Labor Department investigation uncovered discriminatory hiring practices at Pilgrim's Dallas and Nacogdoches, Tex. plants. The company denied all wrongdoing but signed a consent decree in September, agreeing to pay $1 million and hire 63 non-Hispanic females, 100 Hispanic females and 198 non-Hispanic males who met all job qualifications but had been rejected in favor of Hispanic male applicants.
In April 2007 the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) arm of the Department of Homeland Security began its investigation into Pilgrim's Mount Pleasant factory after receiving 76 calls complaining that the company was knowingly hiring undocumented workers. Undercover agents and informants posing as illegals say they penetrated a ring of identity thieves and document peddlers at the plant. According to ICE, Daniel Totosaus-Rodriguez had been working at the plant for a year, making $440 a week under the stolen identity of one Alberto Morales and claiming to be involved in the narcotics trade in Mexico. He and his accomplice Marcos Garcia allegedly sold agents sets of false documents for $1,100 that they guaranteed would be good enough to get a job at the plant--or they'd replace them for free.
Why so confident? They allegedly had an inside connection. Reyna Villarreal, the aunt of Garcia's wife, was a hiring manager in the plant's personnel office. ICE officials charge that Villarreal took a $500 bribe to hire the undercover informant brought to her by Garcia and that they had similarly given jobs to more than a dozen other identity thieves. What's curious is that Villarreal was working there at all. ICE agents discovered that she got her first job with Pilgrim's Pride in 2000 under the name Reyna C. Aleman, using a Social Security number stolen from an Ohio man; she falsely claimed (under penalty of perjury) on employment forms that she was a U.S. citizen. Then in October 2002, says ICE, Reyna Aleman resigned from Pilgrim's Pride, only to be rehired the next day to the same job as Reyna Villarreal, with a different Social Security number. On her application she claimed she had not worked at Pilgrim's Pride before.
That evidently didn't bother her supervisor, Hope Anguiano, who in 2003 wrote an internal memo explaining that Aleman/Villarreal had previously worked for the company under a different identity, according to ICE. Pilgrim's Pride also notarized Villarreal's employment documents and submitted them to the Immigration & Naturalization Service. When the case comes to trial later this year, Villarreal faces as much as 20 years in prison, according to prosecutors.
During the investigation last summer Pilgrim's Pride fired 100 or so workers at Mount Pleasant for having "bad papers." The company says it continues to improve its hiring practices and always checks the authenticity of Social Security numbers used by applicants. Culpability, apparently, doesn't affect the pecking order: So far no executive at the company has been called to account.
February 7, 2008
6 illegal immigrants in Houston get prison, face deportation
6 illegal immigrants in Houston get prison, face deportation
Associaed Press
Six men illegally in the U.S. are going to federal prison and later are subject to deportation for hiding 61 undocumented immigrants in Houston.
Prosecutors today announced the men received prison terms ranging from one year to more than 11 years.
All were arrested last March and later pleaded guilty to harboring illegal immigrants at a stash house and at a business — National Super Express Van Tours.
The immigrants were discovered after an undocumented man, who was released to get $6,000 in smuggling fees to free himself and his wife, flagged down a police officer.
The five Mexican nationals are 37-year-old Juan Carlos Perales-Solis, 40-year-old Jose Garcia-Garcia, 21-year-old Luis Alberto Lara-Gutierrez, 27-year-old David Palomera-Romero and 33-year-old Felipe Muniz-DeLaMora.
Nineteen-year-old Nelson Sergio Aguinaga-Aleman is Honduran.
Associaed Press
Six men illegally in the U.S. are going to federal prison and later are subject to deportation for hiding 61 undocumented immigrants in Houston.
Prosecutors today announced the men received prison terms ranging from one year to more than 11 years.
All were arrested last March and later pleaded guilty to harboring illegal immigrants at a stash house and at a business — National Super Express Van Tours.
The immigrants were discovered after an undocumented man, who was released to get $6,000 in smuggling fees to free himself and his wife, flagged down a police officer.
The five Mexican nationals are 37-year-old Juan Carlos Perales-Solis, 40-year-old Jose Garcia-Garcia, 21-year-old Luis Alberto Lara-Gutierrez, 27-year-old David Palomera-Romero and 33-year-old Felipe Muniz-DeLaMora.
Nineteen-year-old Nelson Sergio Aguinaga-Aleman is Honduran.
February 4, 2008
Illegal immigrants come to Texas from inside the U.S. as other states pass tough laws
Illegal immigrants come to Texas from inside the U.S. as other states pass tough laws
The Associated PressPublished: February 3, 2008
HOUSTON: Illegal immigrants are coming into Texas, but not from where one might think.
While Texas shares a border with Mexico, this rush is coming from Oklahoma, Arizona and other U.S. states that have recently passed tough new anti-illegal immigrant laws.
The two toughest measures are in Oklahoma and Arizona.
The Oklahoma statute, which took effect in November, makes it a crime to transport, harbor or hire illegal immigrants. Effective Jan. 1, the Arizona law suspends the business license of employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. On a second offense, the license is revoked.
Anecdotal information indicates that illegal immigrants are leaving these states in growing numbers.
Today in Americas
Gore endorses Obama as a solver of problemsLost army job tied to doubts on U.S. contractor in IraqA landmark day in California as same-sex marriages begin"They're really tightening the screws," said Mario Ortiz, an undocumented Mexican worker who came to Houston after leaving Phoenix last year. "There have been a lot coming — it could be 100 a day."
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has estimated that 15,000 to 25,000 illegal immigrants have left the area. One builder estimated that 30 percent of the Hispanic work force left Tulsa.
"There's been a tremendous impact in Oklahoma City," said David Castillo, the executive director of the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "We've had several companies close shop and leave the state. Banks have called us and say they're closing 30 accounts per week."
Enrique Hubbard, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, said a dozen Mexican families from Oklahoma have applied for consular documents listing their new homes in the Dallas area. He expects more to arrive because jobs are available in North Texas.
Texas' reputation as a welcoming destination has experts predicting more immigrants will come to Houston and other cities in the state. Texas has not passed any statewide law targeting the employment of undocumented workers.
"Texas is still very much an entrepreneurial place, where you can find your place in this economy," said James Hollifield, a Southern Methodist University professor and migration expert. "It's not an immigrant's paradise, but if you work hard and keep your head down you can get ahead."
Ortiz, a native of southern Mexican state of Tabasco, said he left Phoenix eight months ago working 60 to 70 hours a week as a nursery worker. While now he can only pick up two to three days a week of yardwork and barely earns enough to send back to his family, he prefers to be in Texas.
"Here, they let you work. Over there, they won't. There is a lot of racism, but here there isn't — it's better," Ortiz said of Houston.
___
Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com
The Associated PressPublished: February 3, 2008
HOUSTON: Illegal immigrants are coming into Texas, but not from where one might think.
While Texas shares a border with Mexico, this rush is coming from Oklahoma, Arizona and other U.S. states that have recently passed tough new anti-illegal immigrant laws.
The two toughest measures are in Oklahoma and Arizona.
The Oklahoma statute, which took effect in November, makes it a crime to transport, harbor or hire illegal immigrants. Effective Jan. 1, the Arizona law suspends the business license of employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. On a second offense, the license is revoked.
Anecdotal information indicates that illegal immigrants are leaving these states in growing numbers.
Today in Americas
Gore endorses Obama as a solver of problemsLost army job tied to doubts on U.S. contractor in IraqA landmark day in California as same-sex marriages begin"They're really tightening the screws," said Mario Ortiz, an undocumented Mexican worker who came to Houston after leaving Phoenix last year. "There have been a lot coming — it could be 100 a day."
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has estimated that 15,000 to 25,000 illegal immigrants have left the area. One builder estimated that 30 percent of the Hispanic work force left Tulsa.
"There's been a tremendous impact in Oklahoma City," said David Castillo, the executive director of the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "We've had several companies close shop and leave the state. Banks have called us and say they're closing 30 accounts per week."
Enrique Hubbard, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, said a dozen Mexican families from Oklahoma have applied for consular documents listing their new homes in the Dallas area. He expects more to arrive because jobs are available in North Texas.
Texas' reputation as a welcoming destination has experts predicting more immigrants will come to Houston and other cities in the state. Texas has not passed any statewide law targeting the employment of undocumented workers.
"Texas is still very much an entrepreneurial place, where you can find your place in this economy," said James Hollifield, a Southern Methodist University professor and migration expert. "It's not an immigrant's paradise, but if you work hard and keep your head down you can get ahead."
Ortiz, a native of southern Mexican state of Tabasco, said he left Phoenix eight months ago working 60 to 70 hours a week as a nursery worker. While now he can only pick up two to three days a week of yardwork and barely earns enough to send back to his family, he prefers to be in Texas.
"Here, they let you work. Over there, they won't. There is a lot of racism, but here there isn't — it's better," Ortiz said of Houston.
___
Information from: Houston Chronicle, http://www.houstonchronicle.com
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