Anyone who entered 2005 legislative session with the notion that, after claiming victory with Proposition 200 in the November elections, anti-illegal-immigration lawmakers would rest on their laurels was, in a word, wrong.

Republicans introduced 28 pieces of legislation that they say would reduce the number of people entering Arizona illegally. Democrats contend the measures serve only to divide those of different ideologies and would harm legal residents of Arizona.

“We need to start enforcing laws and stop offering rewards for coming here illegally,” said Rep. Russell Pearce, R-18, the most visible face in the effort to restrict illegal immigration and the sponsor of many of the bills.

Of the 28 bills, five were signed by the governor; five more were vetoed. The rest never made it out of the Legislature.

As the state’s demographics shift — some predictions are that, by 2025, Arizona will be home to more Latinos than non-hispanic whites — the battle to stem the tide of illegal immigrants through a denial of services is probably far from over. In fact, more likely, it has really just begun.

The Bills

The bills introduced cut a wide swath in their attempt to get a grip on what Republicans say is a runaway border problem. One sought to prohibit municipalities from building day labor centers, another to give local law enforcement the ability to enforce federal immigration laws, yet another to declare English the state’s official language.

However, the most heinous bill in the eyes of Democrats was an attempt to limit the education opportunities of illegal residents of the state. Though vetoed, H2030 would have only allowed citizens access to adult education programs, childcare subsidies for working parents, would have prevented non-citizens from receiving state financial aid for college and would have required them to pay the out-of-state tuition rates at state universities.

The Arguments

Democrats argued that the bill unfairly punished children whose parents brought them to Arizona from Mexico. It wasn’t the child’s choice to come here, they said, and the punishment of not being able to afford college shouldn’t fall on their shoulders.

“H2030 was the worst bill I have ever seen,” Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, said. “It was just nasty.”

Rep. Tom Boone, R-4, sponsored the bill and says he doesn’t think those children should be treated any differently than any other children. He says that it is a reality — a “cold, hard” one — that the consequences of a parent’s action affect their children.

“When parents break the law, kids are affected, normally economically,” he said. “I don’t think that just because you’re here illegally and that’s the law you broke you should be treated any differently.”

Ms. Sinema said the larger issue behind the bill is to deny immigrants education.

“When you have people who are undereducated, they can’t gain power,” she said. “You deny them the power to be self-sufficient.”

House Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27, said the bill, when coupled with S1167, which would have required all government business to be conducted in English, was hypocritical.

“We’re saying to people you can’t speak Spanish, but then we’re turning around and saying you can’t take English classes unless you’re a U.S. citizen,” he said. “That’s disingenuous, it’s stupid, it’s ill-advised.”

The final version of the bill passed the House 33-19 and the Senate 16-12. Governor Napolitano vetoed it May 20.

The bill Mr. Pearce said would have had the most impact on directly stopping people from crossing the Arizona border was vetoed because the governor said it was “an unfunded mandate…[and] not a real solution to our immigration problems” in her May 20 veto message.

If she had signed S1306 into law, Mr. Pearce says, there would be a noticeable decrease in the number of illegal immigrants within a short period of time. The bill would have given local law enforcement agencies the ability to enforce federal immigration law.

Because police departments don’t arrest and deport the hundreds or thousands of illegal citizens they encounter on a daily basis, Mr. Pearce said the laws are not feared.

“Once they know the law is going to be enforced,” he said, “I guarantee you the number [of people coming here illegally] will start to go down.”

The problem in his eyes is that police departments are not engaged and are not doing their job.

Veto Message

In her veto message, Ms. Napolitano cites the “significant” cost of training local officers to deal with immigration law enforcement: the Department of Public Safety estimates it would cost $10 million to train its officers, while the city of Phoenix says the task would require $19 million.

The governor explained her veto in more detail at a June 8 press conference. Among her concerns, she said the bill would have been seen as a mandate by the Legislature that local law enforcement agencies need to be enforcing immigration law and those that didn’t — because of cost or some other reason — would have been unnecessarily subjected to criticism.

The bill, she said, also did not comprehensively address all of the pertinent issues.

“There are big questions here,” Ms. Napolitano said. “Who’s responsible for training folks in immigration law enforcement? How do you do that and not step over the line into racial profiling? State and local law enforcement is still relatively unversed in how the new Department of Homeland Security manages immigration.”

Rep. Steve Gallardo, D-13, said the bill was clearly not an answer to the state’s immigration problem and would only discourage crime victims from calling the police if they thought they might be deported.

“Russell Pearce is good at standing up and throwing out his rhetoric, not coming up with solutions,” he said.

Problem Recognized, Approach Is Different, Lawmaker Says

Republicans and Democrats alike agree the clashes over how to deal with illegal immigration stem from the frustration of citizens and lawmakers — the two sides just don’t agree on how to solve the problem.

“None of us are soft on [illegal] immigration,” Mr. Gallardo said. “We all oppose that — it’s how we approach it.”

For many Democrats, this year felt like a constant uphill climb. Each time one immigration bill was heard, another was on the docket and awaiting a vote, when, in the past, there would only be a few immigrant-related bills.

What the bills would have accomplished was also a source of concern for opponents.

“Some of it, frankly, is mean-spirited,” Ms. Sinema said. “Some of that stuff is just mean — it’s not how you treat human beings.”

Mr. Lopes says the driving force behind the anti-immigrant push is a fear of how the state and country is going to be negatively affected. So far, he says, there is no evidence of any negative impact: jobs are not being stolen and illegal immigrants pay more into the system than they take out.

“The people in the Legislature are being demagogues and taking that fear and using it to push an anti-immigrant agenda,” he said.

The issue is not one for the state to consider because the federal government is ultimately responsible for monitoring the border, Mr. Gallardo said. The problem, he said, is not necessarily that the state is trying to protect itself, but that many of the bills introduced are not in the best interest of the state.

Mr. Pearce says Democrats and other opponents are ign
oring poll data that show more than three-quarters of Americans, across party lines, think something needs to be done to stop illegal immigration. He says they are merely pandering to their base and are “corrupt.”

The problem is not merely local. Mr. Pearce is critical of politicians at any level, from town councils to Congress who don’t support immigration reform.

“They’re anti-American, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “What part of ‘illegal’ they don’t understand is beyond me.

“They need to be removed from office.”

Democrats don’t want a solution to the immigration problem, Mr. Pearce said, because it hurts them politically. They have never supported any immigrant bill, he says.

“They’re such hypocrites,” he said. “They say we have a problem but they’re never willing to do anything about it.” —

Reporter Phil Riske contributed to this article.