Texas Has Yet To Follow Arizona’s Lead On Immigration

By Christopher Rangel

Currently, Texas does not have an immigration law pending a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice as other states do. However, that does not mean the Texas legislature has not attempted to pass similar bills to Arizona’s SB 1070.

In anticipation of Arizona’s immigration law, Texas legislators filed more than 15 bills related to immigration in January of last year. The bills range from topics relating to voter ID requirements to bills similar in style to Arizona’s immigration law that makes it an offense for those entering the country illegally.

HB 17(Riddle), HB 113(Harless), SB 124(Patrick, Dan) deal with the enforcement of current federal immigration laws by law enforcement. While SB 126(Patrick, Dan) and HB 296(Berman) deal specifically with the ability of law enforcement officers to inquiry about person’s citizenship status if they suspect the individual to be unlawfully present in the U.S. or the citizenship status of individuals arrested, respectively.

Other bills filled address several hot topics regarding immigration. They include HB 140(Laubenberg), HB 202(Solomons), SB 84(Nelson), which deal with the federal E-Verify system. Other issues targeted were sanctuary cities (HB 81, Flynn) and English as a second language (SB 9, Williams) that essentially deny funding for local governments and agencies that either do not allow law enforcement to enforce immigration laws or agencies that use state funding for public documents in languages other than English.

Implications

Opponents of Texas bills similar to SB 1070 state that, just as the case with Arizona’s immigration law, theses bills potentially add additional costs and tasks to law enforcement agencies. Further, as a result of these new burdens, the bills would bring, law enforcement agencies decrease their ability to investigate more serious crimes and serve crime victims in their community.

A panel at the Texas Tech University that discussed 17 immigration bills suggests the issue of immigration in Texas as complex and having no real simple solution. Former U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales stated he understood “…why states have grown impatient with the federal government’s lack of reform…” However, he believes immigration is a federal issue and the bills fail to take aim at the root of the issue.

Clearly the debate on immigration is not a simple problem with a simple solution. Texas, with an estimated population of unauthorized persons of about 1.65 million has mixed results on its stance. Governor Rick Perry has said a bill that resembles Arizona’s immigration law would not be a good fit for Texas.

As both state legislatures and the federal government await the Supreme Court’s decision, the debate on immigration will continue to bring conflicting viewpoints against each other.

Christopher Rangel is a student at the University of Texas at Austin.