Casting aside a long history of inhospitality, California has now become a virtual sanctuary for the estimated 3.5 million illegal immigrants who live within the borders of the Golden State.
A spate of bills passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature and signed into law earlier this month by Gov. Jerry Brown, who was actively involved in their passage, allows these residents to obtain driver’s licenses, become lawyers and qualify for in-state tuition at California’s university and college systems. Several states extend one or more of these benefits to such immigrants, but under its new laws California will do much more.
The primary—and inter-connected—concerns of these California pilgrims, more than two-thirds of whom hail from Mexico, are deportation and harsh working conditions. Historically, illegal immigrants anywhere are reluctant to complain about low pay or bad treatment on the job because employers could report them to authorities and have them deported. Under one of the new laws signed by Brown, they will be paid overtime if they work more than nine hours per day.
Even more important, employers are now barred from turning in their employees to federal immigration authorities without cause or saying anything to them that would “induce fear” of deportation.
The most far-reaching change of all is a bill known as the Trust Act, which prohibits law enforcement officers from turning over persons they detain to immigration authorities except in arrests for major felonies or sex crimes. Law enforcement objected to a more expansive version of this measure, which Brown obligingly vetoed in 2012. This year he worked with the bill’s authors to get a version acceptable to police and prosecutors; the enacted measure largely follows the practice of the Los Angeles Police Department, the state’s largest police force.
The LAPD, and many other police agencies, resent being used as arresting officers by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, better known as ICE. Police say they need support in immigrant communities to do their jobs of protecting the public and that this won’t happen if residents fear that cooperation would make them subject to questioning—or deportation—by federal authorities.
Via: Real Clear Politics
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