For all the Republican complaints about Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez posturing by introducing an immigration reform bill that most likely won't go anywhere, Sen. Orrin Hatch's "immigration reform" bill is basically an enforcement-only version of the same. Hatch's bill would make receiving federal funds for incarceration conditional on jurisdictions participating in the "Secure Communities" program (the administration recently backtracked on whether or not the program was mandatory for select jurisdictions) and on participation in the 287(g) program, which allows Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to train local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws.
Secure Communities isn't exactly like Arizona's SB 1070, since it only applies to people actually arrested by police. But basically Hatch's bill would turn every local police officer in the country into a force multiplier for ICE. The bill does absolutely nothing about the basic problem, which is that lots of people want to come work here for employers who will hire them whatever their underlying views on immigration but that it's extremely difficult to do so legally.
