States Take On Border Issues

Though most recent hard-line proposals have come from Republicans, the issue isn't always defined by party affiliation. Last year, the Democrats who control Colorado's Legislature blocked Republican bills to deny benefits to illegal immigrants. This year Republicans are proposing several other anti-illegal immigrant bills that face stiff opposition. Meanwhile, former Gov. Richard Lamm, a Democrat, is backing a ballot initiative that would deny benefits to undocumented workers.

In Oklahoma, Republican legislators also want to bar illegal immigrants from receiving state benefits or medical care. Tom Adelson, Democratic chairman of the state Senate's healthcare committee, has vowed to fight the effort. But he has his own proposal to fine employers of illegal immigrants and revoke their state charter, which would take away their right to defend themselves in court.

Adelson said that he would not tolerate women and children being shut out of medical care, but that something had to be done to stop the erosion of good jobs in his state.

"Let's not go after the people who came here to improve their way of life," Adelson said. "Let's go after the companies that are importing masses of disenfranchised people" to avoid paying higher wages.

Some states are considering novel legal tactics.

In New Hampshire, which has one of the smallest Latino populations in the country, two sheriffs last year began arresting illegal immigrants, reasoning that their presence violated state laws against criminal trespass. Immigrant rights groups sued and had the prosecution invalidated. In response to that ruling, Republican legislators are pushing a bill that would enable the state to invoke trespass laws against illegal immigrants, and states such as South Carolina have inquired about the approach.

Trasvina, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sued to block the New Hampshire trespass effort and is fighting many of the new proposals across the country, said many were misguided piecemeal approaches to a national problem that could only be fixed by Congress.

"We can try to put out all these fires in all these local communities," he said, "but if Congress and the president step forward and introduce some comprehensive reform, that'll deal with it all at once."

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Times staff writer Robert Salladay in Sacramento contributed to this report.