USA Today
By Alan Gomez
March 27, 2014
MIAMI
— Three years ago, Florida Republican state Rep. Charles Van Zant tried
to pass a tough, Arizona-style immigration bill to crack down on
undocumented immigrants.
Last
week, he stood in the House chamber and explained how even he, whose
family arrived in North America in 1651, was an immigrant. He then voted
for a bill aimed at
granting in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants.
"This
immigrant boy holds a doctorate degree," Van Zant said before casting
his "yea" vote. "I can't refuse (undocumented immigrants) their
education, because they're
going to be residents with us."
Three
years ago, Republican state Sen. Jack Latvala voted in support of the
Arizona-style measure. Now, he's the lead sponsor of the bill on tuition
for undocumented immigrants.
"There
is no reason in the world why parents' immigration status ought to be
the determining factor of the tuition that our young people pay,"
Latvala said.
Since
the U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the hard-line Arizona
law in 2012, and in the wake of the state spending $3.2 million
defending that law in court,
no state has passed a similar piece of legislation. Instead, six states
have granted in-state college tuition to young undocumented immigrants
and nine states have approved driver's licenses for them, according to
the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"The pendulum seems to have swung," says Ann Morse, immigration director for the conference.
Starting
with Arizona in 2010, a wave of states fed up with Congress for failing
to fix the nation's broken immigration system tried to pick up the
slack. At the heart
of Arizona's sweeping law was a requirement that police officers check
the immigration status of people they've detained if a "reasonable
suspicion" exists the person is in the country illegally.
Lawmakers
in other states quickly jumped on the bandwagon, and in 2011, Alabama,
Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah passed copycat laws. State and
local governments
tried a variety of other ways to go after undocumented immigrants, such
as requiring more proof of citizenship when registering to vote and
requiring employers to check the immigration status of new hires.
Some
of those efforts continue, but Morse says the Supreme Court decision
striking down portions of Arizona's law "cooled things down." The core
of the law requiring police
to help enforce immigration laws survived, but the push to mimic the
law in other states did not.
Morse
says states seem more interested in addressing the needs of more than
520,000 undocumented immigrants granted reprieves from deportation by
the Obama administration
through a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The shift can be seen clearly in the work of immigration advocates, who work with state legislators around the country.
Francesca
Menes, policy coordinator for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, laughs
when asked whether her day-to-day life has changed in the past three
years.
"Oh Lord, yes," she said in between meetings with lawmakers in Tallahassee this week.
Menes
said she has quickly shifted from playing defense to tallying vote
counts on immigrant-friendly bills such as the in-state tuition measure
that has cleared the House
and is before the Senate.
In
a state where Republicans control the House, Senate and Governor's
Mansion, she says, it's been stunning to see the change in just three
years.
"The difference," Menes says, "between then and now is big."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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