The Prince William County Board of Supervisors grabbed center stage yesterday with its resolution, one of the toughest local ordinances in the country, designed to curtail illegal immigration. But the PWC supervisors weren’t acting in a vacuum. The House of Delegates had laid much of the intellectual groundwork this spring, passing a number of bills — some by broad margins, incidentally, suggesting a measure of bipartisan support — that got killed in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.
These bills received very little press coverage at the time. I’ve extracted these descriptions from an old press release issued by the Speaker of the House’s office:
HB 1618
Patron: Jeffrey M. Frederick, R-Prince William.
Passed House 69-31, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-3.
Provides for the Governor to enter into an agreement with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would allow the Department of State Police to enforce civil immigration laws.
HB 1970
Patron: David B. Albo, R-Fairfax.
Passed House 70-28, killed in Senate Courts of Justice.
Provides that any alien who is present in the United States illegally and is removable, as verified by the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.
HB 2687
Patron: John S. Reid, R-Henrico.
Passed House 62-37, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-4.
Discourages businesses from knowingly hiring illegal aliens by making it an unfair employment practice to knowingly employ an unauthorized alien within the Commonwealth.
HB 2926
Patron: Thomas Davis Rust, R-Fairfax/Loudoun.
Passed House 92-6, killed in Senate Courts of Justice 11-4.
Expands the powers of state and local law-enforcement officials to include immigration powers conferred upon the law-enforcement agency by agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
HB 3130
Patron: Kathy J. Byron, R-Bedford/Campbell.
Passed House 71-28, killed in Senate Finance.
Prohibits the issuance of a business license to any individual who cannot provide legal documents proving such individual is legally eligible to be employed or to work in the United States.
Then there was this bill, which protected immigrants — and passed unanimously in both the House and Senate:
HB 1921
Patron: H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.
Passed House 99-0, Passed Senate 40-0.
Protects immigrants by penalizing any person who exhorts anyone by knowingly destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating, or possessing a passport or other immigration document, or other government identification document of another person.
I think illegal immigration could be a sleeper issue in the fall elections.
