Immigration debate won’t go away

Frederick rejects restrictions on services; both sides say fight not over

‘‘I don’t think what happened in Frederick will hurt this issue at all,” said Del. Ronald A. George (R-Dist. 30) of Arnold, who plans to re-introduce a bill requiring proof of citizenship to obtain a driver’s license. ‘‘I feel the debate is going to get louder. It will be stronger.”

Those on the other side of the debate agreed.

‘‘We’re certainly concerned this isn’t the end,” said David Rocah, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, who said the Frederick County proposal would have been unconstitutional. ‘‘So it wouldn’t surprise me if this was not the end of the line in Maryland. There are certainly many politicians who have made a career out of anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

Religious and community leaders meeting in Baltimore County on Thursday hailed a federal judge’s ruling that temporarily halted a crackdown on illegal immigrants that could inadvertently lead to the firing of legal residents.

At issue is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security directive requiring employers to fire workers who can’t clear up problems with their Social Security documentation within 90 days or face sanctions.

A federal District Court judge in San Francisco put the directive on hold on Wednesday. If the rule isn’t stopped permanently, U.S. citizens and legal residents stand to lose their jobs due to glitches in what’s called the ‘‘no-match” letter system, opponents say. Since 1994, the Social Security Administration has sent out no-match letters to employers with 10 or more employees whose Social Security numbers don’t match information in the agency’s database. Until August, when the new rule was announced, no legal restrictions were tied to the letters.

‘‘We’re putting really good, honest people in financial difficulty, and I’m talking about business owners and workers,” said Y. Maria Welch, Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce president, who attended Thursday’s rally.

Welch said it took her six months to clear her paperwork after she married and changed her name, which is why she said the 90-day limit is not enough time.

Not Virginia

The defeat of Frederick County’s anti-illegal immigrant measure will mean the commissioners will not include the proposal in a package of bill requests that will go to the county’s General Assembly delegation next month.

Under the measure, which was similar to recent Virginia laws, food banks, schools and flu-shot clinics that received any county funding would have required recipients to prove either U.S. citizenship or legal resident status.

‘‘I thought that spoke poorly of Virginia, but I didn’t think it would happen here in Maryland,” said Sen. Jennie M. Forehand (D-Dist. 17) of Rockville. ‘‘But knowing the attitudes of some in Frederick County ... I’m really not surprised by a close vote.”

Denying services to those in need because of immigration status would create more problems than it would solve, she said.

‘‘If someone has a communicable disease, you don’t want to treat them so they can be out in the community spreading it?” Forehand said. ‘‘If they don’t have food and are starving, you don’t want anyone to feed them? It’s borderline inhumane. I don’t think there’s many places in Maryland that would do something like that ... Are they going to make children suffer for what their parents did?”

The immigration bill ‘‘wasn’t a race issue,” said Frederick County Commissioner Charles A. Jenkins (R), who sponsored the proposal. ‘‘It’s a matter of ‘Are you in this country legally or illegally?’”

Jenkins said he decided to write the proposal after budget hearings, where every county agency asked for more money to hire Spanish-speaking interpreters and the school board asked to hire more English- language teachers.

‘‘Do we verify legal status if folks are asking us to pay for these things? The answer is, ‘No, we don’t,’” Jenkins said.

In August, Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold (R) issued an executive order requiring businesses with county contracts to sign an affidavit saying that they do not employ illegal immigrants. No businesses were found to be in violation before the order was handed down, said Frederick G. Schram, director of the county’s Office of Central Services.

Several jurisdictions in Virginia have passed or are considering laws to deny public services to illegal immigrants.

Laws won’t help

But illegal immigrants still will live and work here, no matter how many laws are passed, lawmakers and analysts say.

As many as 12 million people live in the United States illegally, including 7.2 million who are employed, said Joseph Chamie, director of research at the nonprofit Center for Migration Studies in New York City. However, ‘‘there’s likely to be more” illegal immigrants in the country, as many as 15 million, he said.

There are two sides to the immigration debate, Chamie said: Employers, ethnic groups and unions arguing for legalization or amnesty because many immigrants have jobs and American-born children, and those who argue that illegal immigrants put a major strain on the economy, including on housing and health care.

‘‘We’re a country that’s trying to become united, but these issues are creating cracks along ethnic lines,” Chamie said.

The reasons for the growing anti-immigrant sentiment are complex, the ACLU’s Rocah said. In part it is a reaction to concern about the economy and in part it is product of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

‘‘The 9⁄11 attacks created a fear of outsiders that is generalized and misplaced,” Rocah said. ‘‘That’s been exploited at the national level and even the local level. This country has a long history of looking at immigrant communities as scapegoats for larger problems that exist. There is also a sense that the federal government has been ineffective in managing immigration to this country and that critique has come from both sides of the political spectrum with different views about what the government should be doing.”

After defeating the Frederick measure, the bill’s opponents approved a resolution calling on Congress to take action on immigration.

While said he expects immigrant foes to continue to use the issue to divide people, he also sees positive signs.

‘‘This was a very conservative county and there were local politicians — Democrats and Republicans — willing to stand up and say this was the wrong thing to do,” Rocah said. ‘‘That’s refreshing.”

Aides to elected officials in Baltimore County and Baltimore city said there is no chance of an anti-immigrant measure like Frederick County’s in their jurisdictions.

‘‘If the concept of a melting pot was true anywhere, it’d be Baltimore,” Shaun E. Adamec, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Council. ‘‘I imagine that [anti-immigrant] sentiment exists somewhere in Baltimore, but it’s certainly not on the Baltimore council and not among the majority of Baltimoreans.”

Staff Writer Sherry Greenfield and Capital News Service reporter Danielle Ulman contributed to this report.