Via the right-wing anti-immigration site Borderfire Report, we get the year-end news that state and local lawmakers passed an unprecedented number of pieces of legislation to address immigration concerns in 2007. The figures come from a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tallied a total of 1,562 pieces of legislation introduced last year, 244 of which were passed and enacted -- triple the number from 2006. Of those propsed laws, 250 addressed drivers licenses and other forms of identification, while another 244 dealt with employment verification.
Several of the E-Verify system to check the status of workers, the very same system that has been fingered as too frequently inaccurate in for use in implementing the federal "no-match" rule. And apparently the new Tennessee law does not provide for an appeals process. The Arizona law requires that businesses terminate the employment of anyone found to be working illegally, and puts them on a three-year probation period during which they will have to file reports on all new hires to county or state attorneys.
One can only assume that the number of local immigration laws will continue to rise in 2008 in the absence of a new federal plan. Yet this is also further evidence of how impossible it will be for the eventual Democratic nominee to avoid the topic in the general election, especially in places like Tennessee, Arizona, and the hundreds of other localities that have decided to take matters into their own hands.
--Kate Sheppard
