In most years, illegal immigration is one of the hottest topics in Arizona politics. But with the state budget in the red by billions of dollars, the usually high-profile issue has taken a back seat.
However, a handful of lawmakers are still focusing on illegal immigration-related issues, and a number of bills have been introduced in the Legislature. No one expects them to be taken off the back-burner until the budget is settled, but they are hoping that once the Legislature figures out how to erase a $3 billion deficit, they can once again take up the issue that often puts Arizona in the national spotlight.
Sen. Jonathan Paton, a Republican from Tucson, and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Phoenix, have submitted several bills on human smuggling and trafficking. Sen. Chuck Gray, a Mesa Republican, is urging the federal government to reimburse Arizona for the costs of enforcing federal immigration laws. And few would be surprised to learn that Sen. Russell Pearce has introduced nearly a dozen bills regarding illegal immigration.
“Once that’s over with we can focus on other things,” Paton said of the budget crisis, which has all other legislation on hold. “It’s an incentive to get this over with.”
Paton and Sinema have partnered to combat human smugglers, submitting bills in the Senate and House that would increase penalties for sex traffickers. Those bills target the methods smugglers use to control their victims, such as withholding access to passports or other immigration documents, or manipulating them with drugs.
“Human trafficking has been an issue that I’ve been concerned about for years. As a social worker, we saw a lot of young girls and women who were trafficked for sex purposes, and I think that’s just heinous,” Sinema said.
Paton also has sponsored a bill that would make it a felony to knowingly harbor or conceal an undocumented alien, as well as one that would enhance human-smuggling penalties if the crime involved a threat of violence.
Sinema has four bills aimed at cracking down on human smugglers and traffickers. One would create a coordinating council to examine the extent and impact of human smuggling in Arizona, while another would increase the penalties for forgery if the crime was committed to secure a drop house for smuggled immigrants.
Taking a tough stance on smuggling and trafficking is critical because of the other crimes associated with it, Paton said, as well as the “underground economy” that includes money laundering, stolen vehicles, forgery, and drop houses, which are notorious as hotbeds of violent crime.
Rep. Adam Driggs, a Phoenix Republican, is sponsoring a bill that would increase the penalties for human smuggling if a weapon is involved.
“Quite frankly, in almost every instance there’s weapons involved,” said Driggs, a former prosecutor. “The things that are going on in these drop houses, these are the worst of the worst, these criminals that are trafficking humans — kidnapping them, holding them for ransom, starving them, raping them. There’s some terrible offenses that are going on by these people.”
Pearce, one of Arizona’s staunchest advocates for a tougher stance on illegal immigration, has sponsored bills on a number of related issues. He wants car owners to be required to prove they are in the U.S. legally in order to register their vehicle titles. He wants those who live in public housing to prove they are in the country legally as well. And he wants the state Department of Education to collect information on which students are in the country illegally and to document how much money their schooling is costing the state.
But among his top priorities, Pearce said, is a bill that would make being in the country illegally a Class 1 Misdemeanor trespassing charge, and another that would prohibit the state and local governments from enacting any law that limits the enforcement of federal immigration law. Rep. Tom Boone, a Republican from Peoria, sponsored a similar bill regarding federal laws, which Pearce said would eliminate “sanctuary policies” in Arizona and would “take the handcuffs off” law enforcement.
Pearce said he sponsored the trespassing and vehicle-registration bills at the request of law enforcement officials. The trespassing bill, he said, would allow police officers to hold illegal aliens on that charge if they were suspects in other crimes that were still under investigation. If police didn’t need to hold them, the agencies could simply turn the suspects over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without filing the trespassing charge.
Law enforcement officials “have said a trespassing provision would be very helpful to them because if there’s an investigative lead or a suspect in another crime, they’d like to have an Arizona crime to hold them on,” Pearce said.
The Legislature recently passed a revision to the fiscal year 2009 budget, which was facing a $1.6 billion shortfall, and revenue for 2010 is expected to fall short of projections by $3 billion. House Speaker Kirk Adams and Senate President Bob Burns are mandating that the budget be dealt with before other legislation, and Senate bills are not even being referred to committee until a 2010 budget is approved.
Paton said illegal immigration-related legislation, possibly the most contentious issue the Legislature has dealt with over the past few years, is taking a lower profile in 2009 because of the nationwide economic crisis. As the economy has gone into recession and the housing industry that relied heavily on undocumented labor has ground to a halt, many illegal aliens have opted to leave the country and fewer are coming here with so few jobs available, which Paton feels is helping to shift the focus away from the issue.
“The budget is dominating pretty much everything this year, and I think that we’ve seen a reduction in illegal immigration because the economy isn’t doing very well. So that’s the biggest deterrent is the collapse of the homebuilding industry,” Paton said. “Still, the Tucson sector for the Border Patrol is still the busiest in the country. We still have a lot of issues.”
Pearce said the budget crisis and illegal immigration are more intertwined than many people realize or acknowledge due to the financial burden that undocumented aliens place on the state.
“I don’t know how in the world that it would not be a part of the budget discussion,” the Mesa Republican said. “It is the big elephant in the room. We talk about budget problems. You want lower taxes? You want smaller class sizes? You want … smaller lines in emergency rooms? Then you ought to enforce the law.”
The massive bottleneck of bills that are going unheard while the Legislature works on the budget is expected to lead to a flood of bill hearings late in the session, leaving many lawmakers to wonder if there will be enough time to get to their bills. Paton and Driggs can at least have confidence that their bills will be heard in their respective judiciary committees, which they chair.
“I at least have some control over that. That’s going to be one of my priorities,” Paton said.
But until a budget is passed, bills such as Pearce’s, Paton’s and Sinema’s will have to wait while the Legislature’s biggest priority takes precedence.
“I think we’ll be able to settle the budget situation for this year and then work on the other issues. But for all of us, th
e focus is obviously on the budget, and appropriately that’s where it should be,” Sinema said.

To see a list of all the immigration-related bills intorduced in the 2009 Legislature, click here: http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/story.cfm?ID=10425