As today’s Potomac News reports, the resolution that the Prince William County Board of Supervisors passed Wednesday morning was far short of what was proposed back in July:
The final anti-illegal immigration resolution is a watered-down version of the one introduced in July by Prince William Supervisor John T. Stirrup, R-Gainesville.
(…)
The ordinance prevents illegal immigrants from getting business licenses and authorizes a seven-member Criminal Alien Police unit, along with training in immigration law for roughly 500 county police officers.
Eight county services - four dealing with the elderly and disabled - also will be denied to illegal immigrants.
The ordinance denies in-home medical services for elderly and disabled illegal immigrants; in-home services for aging illegal immigrants, which may include safety assessments of dwellings; adult identification services, which include fingerprinting for the elderly and disabled who may wander away from home; and an elderly disabled tax relief program.
Tax exemptions for home renovations, rental and mortgage assistance, substance abuse programs for jail inmates and a substance abuse outreach program for juveniles also will be denied to illegal immigrants.
Ask yourself a serious question; how many illegal immigrants are going to leave Prince William County because they can’t get services like these ? How many illegal immigrants are even taking advantage of services like these ? I’d be willing to venture a guess that the numbers are small, if not non-existent.
The original proposal would have gone much further:
The initial resolution would have had every county agency that dealt with the public checking for legal status before providing county services.
Under Stirrup’s first proposal police would have been directed to determine the legal status of every person they stopped for violations of state law or county ordinance.
It also would have allowed anyone to sue the county government if they determined county employees weren’t verifying legal status.
Administratively, of course, this would’ve been a nightmare for county agencies and the police and, legally, would have been even far more subject to a Court challenge than the resolution the County actually passed.
Which all leads to a question…..was this entire three month exercise really nothing more than a political ploy for the November elections ?
Politicians playing politics ? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
That’s true to a point. The original proposal in July had problems, mostly legal issues, which they worked hard to fix before the approved it.
This resolution is only slightly different than what was passed last month, mostly to add the education clauses.
Anybody who has followed this closely knew that the july proposal was modified before it was voted on and passed.
Some say the new proposal does nothing. If so, it seems odd that people are filing lawsuits against it. The PW HRC seems to think it does way too much. I know it doesn’t do too much, but it obviously does SOMETHING.
And the message it has sent to illegal immigrants is a good first step. The education added should alleviate the concerns of the LEGAL immigrant community (wonder whether HSM is happy about that, I hope so but who knows).