PEGGY PALMER: BUSINESSES, HISPANICS EMPLOYING SCARE TACTICS
BY SEN. PEGGY PALMER
An alliance of Hispanic organizations and business groups has voiced opposition to the Kansas Illegal Immigration Relief Act (Senate Bill 458). Scare tactics and misinformation have been employed by a weighty coalition of business groups from chambers of commerce to builders associations to the Kansas Farm Bureau, which lamented in a recent statement on immigration policy: "The measures would penalize businesses by potentially revoking their state-granted business license for knowingly hiring illegal aliens."
Only those Kansas businesses that are knowingly hiring illegal aliens should fear revocation of their business licenses. Why would legitimate, law-abiding business owners object to these provisions?
The provisions of Senate Bill 458 also have been misrepresented to the Hispanic community. The bill does not call for denial of social or educational services or benefits to all immigrants, only to those immigrants who have entered our state illegally and who have no documented reason to be here. There should be consequences and not rewards for willfully disobeying our laws, including those laws related to immigration. Open and deliberate refusal to obey our laws should be called what it is: anarchy.
Who controls the borders of our state? Do "we the people" via our state laws and statutes, or do the illegal immigrants and the employers that knowingly encourage and sanction illegal activity and exploit undocumented workers?
Why is it acceptable to label as "racists" or "xenophobes" those law-abiding citizens who want to see our existing immigration laws enforced? Why do we think of it as compassionate to ignore the fact that unscrupulous business owners line their own pockets as they hire illegal aliens at slave-labor wages without benefits or means to appeal their treatment? Why is it deemed anti-business to seek to empower our state agencies with tools to better enforce the immigration laws that the federal government is unable or unwilling to enforce?
Current federal immigration laws and policies leave states with big gaps in enforcement capabilities. Senate Bill 458 will empower the state of Kansas and law-abiding businesses with necessary and long-overdue tools to address illegal immigration, its multifaceted consequences including unfair labor practices, and its impact on the legal citizens and legal immigrants of Kansas. Oklahoma, Indiana and Arizona already have recognized the need to address similar problems.
If you are part of the majority of Kansans who support these efforts to protect Kansas' borders and to support those Kansas businesses committed to a work force of legal employees, I urge you to contact your state legislators in support of Senate Bill 458. To further educate yourself on the provisions of the bill, you may view the full text at the Web site http://www.kslegislature.org/bills/2008/458.pdfl.
Peggy Palmer is a Republican state senator from Augusta.
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