http://wcco.com/local/pawlenty.illegal.immigrants.2.624884.html
Most of Pawlenty’s illegal immigration plan failed two years ago, when Republicans controlled the House. Prospects for the latest package appear even worse now that Democrats rule both legislative chambers. Key Democrats were panning the plan minutes after the governor’s news conference wrapped up.
“He’s doing it again in 2008,” said Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, DFL-Minneapolis. “This is an election cycle and I am very disappointed that our governor has chosen to use this issue as a political issue to advance his political agenda.”
One of the most contentious proposals would prohibit cities from having so-called sanctuary ordinances that prevent police from asking about immigration status. An alternate version would subtract state aid from cities that kept the ordinances.
A 2006 bill to ban sanctuary ordinances went nowhere in the Senate, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller made it clear the proposal would get little attention in the upcoming session.
“These are warmed-over proposals that could not pass the House of Representatives when his party controlled the House, and I presume if he can find a Republican to author this they’ll get a hearing of some sort. But there’s nothing new here,” Pogemiller said.
Instead, Democrats are more interested in giving resident tuition to the foreign-born children of illegal immigrants at state colleges and universities, a proposal they call the Dream Act and have been pushing since 2006. Torres Ray said that proposal is part of a larger focus on education, one of her caucus’s priorities.
http://wcco.com/realitycheck/Reality.Check.immigration.2.354568.html
Estimates of illegals: from a low of 18,000 to the governor’s high, 85,000. And there’s no way to know how many of them commit crimes, because the state doesn’t keep records.
So where does the governor get his information?
“You have to go out and talk to anybody who lives in the real world,” Pawlenty has said. “Go talk to cops. Go talk to social service workers. Go talk to hospital administrators.”
But getting information that way is INCOMPLETE.
Reports of crime by illegal immigrants are certainly true, but no one has any idea how many. The state doesn’t track it; the evidence is only anecdotal.
We can’t verify it, because the governor says it was given to him confidentially by elected officials and law enforcement.
Nevertheless, it’s why the governor says he’s proposing an anti-crime package targeting illegal immigrants. And not for the first time.