Senate panel passes immigration bill after 'major surgery'

The Wichita Eagle

March 12, 2008

A Senate committee passed an significantly revised illegal immigration reform bill today after performing what one sponsor called 'major surgery.'

The revised measure, now Substitute for Senate Bill 458, no longer requires businesses to check employees' work eligibility through the federal e-Verify system. It also removed most penalties for businesses that violate the law and would not eliminate in-state tuition for illegal immigrants who graduated from Kansas high schools.

Using e-Verify would shield businesses from penalties if they were caught employing illegal immigrants they had verified using the database.

'How can they gut this thing when the citizens of Kansas are calling 300 to one to leave it in its original form?' asked Ed Hayes, chapter director for the Kansas Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

Sponsor Sen. Peggy Palmer, R-Augusta, said the new bill took the side of big business and did nothing to solve the problem after the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee passed the changed bill.

Jeffrey Glendening, vice president of the Kansas Chamber, called the revised bill 'a giant step forward.'

An amendment offered by Sen. John Vratil, R-Leawood, eliminated broad swaths of Palmer's original proposal and added three amendments.

His changes also cut out a section that would have required law enforcement officers to ask about the citizenship or immigration status of everyone they stopped, and a portion intended to block illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits.

Vratil added a section that made using false or misleading documents to get a job a felony and made it a felony to coerce another person to work.

Republican Sens. Jim Barnett of Emporia and Ralph Ostmeyer of Grinnell, who were sponsors of the measure, both voted against it.

The House Federal and State Affairs Committee is expected to vote on a similar bill this afternoon.

For more, read Thursday's Wichita Eagle.

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