House Panel advances tough immigration bill
Capitol Spotlight for weeklies for week of March 4, 2007
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau 
Finding the front door locked by federal law, a state House bill hailed as the nation's 
strongest immigration reform measure goes around to the back to sock it to employers 
deliberately hiring illegal aliens.
House Bill 1804 by Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, rode the momentum of an all-day blitz 
through the House Judiciary and Public Safety Committee toward expected approval by 
the full House and a more uncertain future in the Senate.
The daylong event featured a demonstration of a federal database for checking a job 
applicant's Social Security number and other documents, a media unveiling and a public 
hearing in the House chamber that held 100 or so advocates and critics past sundown. 
During about an hour of questioning, Terrill said the federal government does not allow 
states to penalize employers directly for violating federal immigration laws, but states can 
punish them indirectly.
"We are going around the back door to do what we can," he said.
One thing it does is place the employer in jeopardy of paying civil damages to a U.S. 
citizen fired from a job if the employer is found to have an undocumented worker on the 
payroll at the time. The bill also requires an employer who cannot verify the Social 
Security number of a new worker to withhold six percent of the worker's wages, which is 
well above the state's current income tax rate.
Terrill tabbed the provision as "the great leveler," which allows a discharged employee to 
blow the whistle on his former boss for hiring illegal workers. The employee could 
recover wages and benefits, plus reasonable attorney fees and costs, he said.
But Terrill cited a "safe harbor" from penalties for an employer who voluntarily opts into 
the Basic Pilot Program for citizenship verification, a program criticized by an attorney 
for Catholic Charities as less than 50 percent accurate.
The State Chamber of Commerce is not happy about the bill's provisions targeting 
employers and prefers reform come at the federal level.
 Sen. Kenneth Corn, D-Poteau, who is handling the bill in the Senate, was hopeful but 
saw problems in the early death of several similar Senate measures and that "the State 
Chamber's against it."
Senate Co-president Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, said he believes some kind of 
immigration reform will become law but perhaps not as written by Terrill.
He also said he realizes there is concern among Native Americans about an English-only 
bill in the Legislature but that "English is our primary language."
 Terrill's bill also would deny resident college tuition and scholarships granted in a 2003 
bill to students whose parents are illegal and would prohibit health benefits for illegal 
immigrants, their spouses and children who were not born in the United States. It also 
would limit eligibility for driver licenses and identity cards to legal immigrants.
Terrill said there is a direct cost of $200,000 a year to Oklahoma and indirect costs two to 
three times higher.
"Illegal immigration is a tremendous and growing problem," Terrill said. "The federal 
government simply isn't going to do anything about it."
Republican Congressman Tom Cole of Norman, at a recent meeting of the Oklahoma 
Press Association, said he sees a decent chance for bipartisan action on immigration 
reform.
Shirley Cox of Catholic Charities said the Basic Pilot Program "is far from a perfect 
system," quoting Social Security Administration estimates that 17.8 million of its records 
contain discrepancies. She also said only 244 undocumented students out of a total 
197,836 in higher education had used the tuition program in the 2005-2006 academic 
year,     
Mauro Yanez, a legal immigrant from Venezuela who studied at Oklahoma City 
University and the University of Oklahoma, decried the repeal of in-state tuition.
"Education is the only way to improve our conditions," he said.
Patricia Fennel, executive director of the Latino Community Development Agency, said 
hotel and manufacturing interests had told her "they could not operate" without 
immigrant workers.
Joyce Mucci of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, called the bill a 
"reasonable and realistic approach" to an issue creating a heavy burden on state services.
"It's one of the better bills we've ever seen from a state," she said.
Terrill was invited to be on a CNN show hosted by Lou Dobbs, a persistent proponent of 
tough immigration changes.
HHH
Terrill had another easy victory in the House Appropriations Committee, which 
approved a scaled-back version of his accelerated personal income tax cut as well as a 
corporate income tax reduction.
House Bill 1388, which has not been endorsed by House Speaker Lance Cargill, R-
Harrah, advanced to the full House on a 7-2 vote.  The bill cuts the top tax rate from 5.65 
percent to 5.5 percent next year and to 5.25 percent in 2009 if revenues grow by at least 
four percent this year.
His original bill would have cut the rate to 4.65 percent, but was trimmed to a 
"reasonable and achievable" rate in face of lower revenue projections.
There was no opposition to House Bill 1386, which drops the current flat six percent rate 
for all corporations to a sliding scale that hits six percent only to corporations earning 
more than $200,000 a year.
HHH