Bills Signed in California in a Flurry

 

Bills Signed in California in a Flurry

By IAN LOVETT

Published: October 1, 2012 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/thinktanked/wp/2012/10/01/dream-act-immigration-329-billion-to-u-s-economy-by-2030/

LOS ANGELES — Facing a deadline of midnight Sunday to take action on bills the California Legislature passed this session, Gov. Jerry Brown signed dozens of them over the weekend on issues ranging from health care to corporate taxation, while vetoing dozens more.

The most explosive bills on Mr. Brown’s desk concerned immigration. He signed legislation that would allow young illegal immigrants who qualify for the new federal work-permit program to obtain driver’s licenses. Gil Cedillo, the Democratic state assemblyman who sponsored the bill, said it would dramatically improve life for up to 500,000 eligible young people and their families.

“We have to do at the state level all that we can to assimilate immigrants into the mainstream, in the absence of action and leadership out of Congress,” Mr. Cedillo said. “That’s our duty. That’s the American project. We are a nation of immigrants.”

Mr. Brown vetoed several other bills that had been pushed by immigrant rights advocates, including one that would have prohibited law enforcement officers from detaining illegal immigrants for deportation unless they had been charged with a serious or violent crime. In addition to the Trust Act, as it was called, he vetoed bills that would have offered greater protections to farm workers and domestic workers.

“He passed bills that we needed, but it became a bittersweet win,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Those bills, and many others that Mr. Brown vetoed, came from his own Democratic Party, which controls both houses of the Legislature.

Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said Mr. Brown has emerged over the past two years as one of the few centrists in California politics.

“He’s obviously a strong Democrat, but he’s much more centrist than most members of his own party in the Legislature,” Mr. Schnur said.

In addition to the bills on immigration, Mr. Brown signed legislation that would allow juveniles sentenced to life in prison to be eligible for early release after 25 years. He rejected a bill, backed by some gay rights advocates, that would have allowed judges to recognize more than two legal parents for a given child.

www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com