Posted on 06/17/2005 9:18:36 PM PDT by bayourod
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) - Immigrants won a handful of protections from the 2005 Nevada Legislature, including measures that preserve their access to college scholarships, aim to improve their health and target human traffickers.
Advocates point to the battle over cutting back the cash-strapped Millennium Scholarship program as the most visible win for immigrants.
Republicans in the Senate had backed a plan that would have prohibited students without Social Security numbers from receiving the $10,000 college tuition awards. Late-night, hot-tempered negotiations blew up when Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, asked Democrats if they wanted the money to go to "illegal aliens."
Although the issue - along with new grade point average requirements and semester credit limits - forced lawmakers into a special session, the compromise deal removed the Social Security provision and was approved unanimously in the Senate and by a large majority in the Assembly.
"These are children who've gone through the public school system and their parents are paying taxes," said Jan Gilbert of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. "We believe they deserve (the scholarship) like other students."
A bill that tries to reduce harassment and discrimination in schools ranks high on American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist Laura Mijanovich's list of victories for immigrants. Mijanovich said immigrant children, particularly Muslim girls who wear headscarves, are often bullied, and school employees don't always deal with the complaints.
AB202 requires schools to have a uniform system of reporting harassment or bullying, and mandates staff training.
"They need to understand there's a lot of bias and stereotypes that need to be broken, and I believe this bill will help them deal with it in a more positive way," she said.
Attorney General Brian Sandoval introduced two bills aimed at protecting recent arrivals to the state, including SB456, which cracks down on human trafficking, slavery and forced labor.
Migrant workers in the construction and agricultural industries, and young men and women caught in the sex trade are the most common victims in Nevada, Chief Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner said.
The bill rewrites a Nevada law on involuntary servitude to include enslaving someone by confiscating their passport or threatening them with deportation.
"It gives us a far stronger tool to prosecute those trafficking in human slavery by allowing us to get them for physical and nonphysical threats," Gardner said. "It also helps us target the middle men, those who do the recruiting and harboring of trafficking victims."
Sandoval's other effort, which would have regulated businesses that advertise translation services but often dispense specious legal advice on naturalization, died in an Assembly committee.
AB490 ran into opposition from legal experts who argued the businesses were illegally practicing law and should be shut down, not regulated.
Assemblyman Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas was more successful with his proposal to bar notaries public from advertising with the Spanish translation "notario publico" - a common term for "lawyer" in some countries.
Lawmakers also created and funded an Office of Minority Health to coordinate programs to try to improve minorities' access to affordable health care.
Advocates were less successful in pushing a bill that would have required construction companies that have contracts with the state to recruit more minorities and women. Faced with industry opposition, the bill was rewritten as a resolution encouraging women and minorities to take advantage of opportunities in the field.
In our local hospital's registration room there are two signs one in Spanish. If you are a citizen and need health care you won't be seen unless you show your doctor's order, proof of health care and a picture ID.
Now, if you are an illegal you are entitled to free health care, if you are an illegal who is pregnant, and thousands of them are, your baby is going to get free medical care.
Who do the idiot open border people think are going to pay for the illegals' health care, Santa Claus? No, it is the American citizens who have worked like dogs all their lives and are now being given the shaft by our President and the Congress. Health care is being withheld from elderly people and they are getting what is known around here as the "morphine drip", and then its on to the grave yard. Hooray for open borders, huh? These people take far more than they give, and it will always be so.
You disagree with that?
Do you really believe that the legal electoral method, through a citizen's involvement and vote is some kind of contemptuous magic wand?
Sorry, but if that is your opinion as evidenced by your comment...we disagree fundamentally. If that was not your intent, then my apoligies in advance and I'll just ignore the comments altogether.
The open border crowd doesnt like to argue for their position in the open. They undermine laws and enforcement of law and use incrementalism without ever letting on to the general public what their aim is. They figure by the time the public finds out it will be too late to go back.
So, according to this logic, someone say, living in Ethiopia should be afforded the full rights and protections of our social welfare disaster, err...program, get to vote, get a US driver's license, etc.
That logic is as rediculous as your own. The poster did not say that that illegal aliens should be run down as jaywalkers. You are putting those words into his mouth (or in this case, onto his keyboard). What he clearly indicated was referencing the illegal alien (who is here illegally) being given a pass on his/her criminal activity and being made legal...talk about a magic wand!
Or, that same illegal, being able to disobey our laws and come here simply so that their child can be born here as a citizen thereby getting them legal residency too.
I do not believe our laws should be flaunted in this manner and am for, as I stated earlier on this thread, using the legal, electoral process to change the 14th amendment through another amendment if necessary, to disallow that provision for those illegally in this country.
Nothing fanatic or anti-immigration, or rascist about that whatsoever. Immigration is good for this country so long as it is legal and recognizes that people are coming here to add to America and become a part of it.
Now all of that is just my opinion as expressed on this forum. Nothing more or less.
However, I will say this. His views are so out of touch with the main stream that there is no danger of it. Or would you deny an American citizen his rights to vote simply because you disagree with him...and yet grant those same rights to people illegally in this country by waving your own magic wand and making them legal.
Sorry, but those arguements, IMHO, or what we used to call bassackwards.
I am not afraid of LaRouche. He is out of touch and I trsut the good American people to see that and vote it down every time he pokes his head up. Besides, even with their radical opinions that no majority will ever latch onto...they still have the right to express them and to vote in so far as they obey the laws of the land and do not infringe on others rights.
What is being proposed on this thread is to flaunt those laws on their head for those who are here illegally, making them "legal". Can't you see that that road leads to the very thing you fear?
Just my opinion.
Since they use fraudlent Social Security Numbers (when their scum bag employers don't actually pay them in cash under the table), the monies collected by the SS actually get stuffed into the general fund. The most of any tax that illegals pay is State Sales Tax whenever the purchase beans, rice and tortillas. They do not pay income tax to either the U.S. Government nor to the State in which they are living, yet the use all of the resources that are provided by their local City, County, State and U.S. Government, including but not limited to: medical care (mostly at emergency rooms including of course, prescription drugs); schools; government funded housing and in many cases free food at food pantries.
There are local "Hispanic Outreach Centers" and even some churches who help sponsor them and at the "outreach centers" they are shown how to get driver's licenses, bank accounts and access other welfare programs, paid for by YOUR TAXES not one penny from the illegal or agency "helping" the "migrants."
The payoff - low income Americans getting fired every day from labor intensive jobs and even by some local governments, to hire illegals for less money. So much for NAFTA working.
The "legal vs illegal" reason for opposing Mexican immigrants just started being used a few years ago to after other reasons given by opponents of immigrants were pr oven indefensible.
An "apple" isn't an argument either, but that doesn't mean that there is no definition of apple.
The Fourteenth Amendment reads in part as follows:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "
Non citizens have to be given the same protections of the law as citizens. That's the Constitution. What don't you understand about the Constitution?
There are a lot of tax cheats, but that doesn't deny the fact that the laws still exist. There are a lot of people who violate traffic laws also.
Bayourod replied with the 14th Amendment:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "
My own opinion is that those two views are not mutually exclusive as bayourod would emply. If the illegals are to provided with equal protection under the law, and due process, which I believe they should be, then that also means that they are bound to obey and follow and respect those same laws. Equal protection cuts both ways...we are entitled to be protected from their illegal activities.
The fact is...what they are doing is illegal and they need to be prosecuted according to the law, equally just as if someone were committing illegal acts against them.
IMHO, they need to be deported and told to come in through the legally proscribed means. They need to be registered as someone who attempted to enter illegally and informed that in repeat offenses they may well be incarcerated and put to work benefitting this country, before they are deported again...and so on and so forth. But that is just my opinion on the matter.
In my estimation, the arguement that the issue of illegality is a non-issue in this debate is demonstrably patently wrong. It has everything to do with it. According to the 14th amendment and the constitution, those illegals are responsible for their acts and must be held accountable for their illegalities precisely because there is equal protection under the law.
Gotta go.
I can give you many actual reasons why I would oppose that. But I certainly would not say something stupid like " I'm against it only because it is illegal."
If you like legal immigrants but don't like illegal immigrants for the sole reason that they are illegal, then, by definition, you will like the illegal ones after they become legal.
And it's not because builders aren't paying construction workers very well, it's because there aren't enough American construction workers willing to leave their homes in rust belt states to go work in Nevada.
During the Great Depression, when men heard rumors of jobs in an area they road the rails across the country to get there. (rails are steal cables under box cars).
Today it's easier to just to pop the top on another beer and let the wife/girlfriend/parents pay the bills.
no
I like immigration laws designed to protect my country from trespassers. I want them enforced. I don't approve of allowing foreign nationals to ignore border controls and waltz in and out of the country at their leisure anymore than I would approve of transients walking in and out of my home at their leisure. I especially resent the authorities telling me, "Well, there's nothing we can do about it. Transients are going to barge into your home anyway, so you might as well find a way to enjoy it. And oh, by the way. You need to treat them better when they're in your home. We think you need to pay to send their kids to college. "
Well said.
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