Monday, April 25, 2011

 

32 Texas immigration bills filed by legislators


By Raul Garcia Jr.
Legislators across the country have been introducing anti Immigration laws after seeing Arizona pass SB 1070 and the same kind of politics has spilled into Texas with 32 bills that will be voted on in Austin. 

Santa Maria, Texas Border Wall along the Rio Grande River.
The Rio Grande Valley sits along the border of Mexico and the United States and the passage of illegal immigrants from Mexico, South America and other parts of the world happens everyday. And business people in the area have been employing such law abiding and hardworking people for a long time.

One bill that is gaining wide spread attention is Republican State Representative Debbie Riddle’s HB 2012 that creates tough punishments for those that employ unauthorized immigrants. If passed violators will face up to $10,000 dollars in fines and two years jail time.

It’s been estimated that eleven to twelve million people in the United States are illegal immigrants and possibly one-third of the population in South Texas is undocumented.

82nd Legislature Regular Session.
“Those are Federal Government issues and the state of Texas should not even be dealing with the Federal Government’s job,” said State Representative Armando Martinez (D-Weslaco). “We need to keep up with the issues of Texas like jobs, education and health care.”

San Juan’s communications specialist for La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, John-Michael Torres said the rally at the capitol on February 23 was a huge success as 300 people from the Rio Grande Valley went to speak with legislators to educate them against supporting anti-immigrant legislation.


A mural at LUPE in San Juan representing farmworkers.
“The work we are trying to do is lift up communities to lift up their lives,” said Torres. “If SB 9 passes it’s not going to change the need for immigration services or tax preparation, but there will be a lot more people afraid to walk out of their homes and it will definitely effect a lot of people.”

According to passionate advocates against the anti immigration legislation congressmen and woman do not understand the economic benefits that are received from labor coming out of Mexico and South America.  And the major concern from the immigrants is how the law will affect them when crimes are committed against them and their family members.

“We have a lot of concerns with some of the anti- immigrant sentiment concerning bad law in Texas,” said Corinna  Spencer-Scheurich, South Texas Civil Rights Project Regional Director. “The idea of not providing Spanish forms is just simply discriminatory. The only thing that is does is create more of a hardship for people in working in state agencies to try to help out people fill out forms.”

Spencer-Scheurich said it’s is not the job of the state of Texas to try and fix the broken immigration policies and a federal change on immigration is needed because it’s a federal law and trying to go after employers is not going to be effective.

“I think we could do better as citizens and after all we are a nation of immigrants. Ultimately we need each other to succeed,” Spencer-Scheurich said.  “People are very passionate about this issue because it comes to the safety and security of the community and discrimination and people really feel it’s a justice issue.”


# posted by Raul Garcia Jr. @ 8:39 PM
Comments:
such a nice view. very relaxing. and i liked your blog. Good content so interesting. keep it up.

http://www.nationalvisas.com.au/
# posted by Blogger Dylan : April 27, 2011 at 7:58 PM
 

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