The Washington-based Migration Policy Institute warns that the large and growing population of illegal immigrants “represent[s] a fundamental breakdown in the rule of law.” But most officials at the state and local level still take a hands-off, it’s-not-my-job approach — even though they are eventually forced to absorb most of the estimated $10 billion annual cost of providing services to the 11 million undocumented aliens.
That may be slowly changing. Virginia Delegate Dave Albo’s diverse suburban district, where 20 percent to 30 percent of the population is foreign born, is at the cutting edge of the nation’s immigration debate. The Springfield Republican authored the law that denies non-residents Virginia drivers licenses after seven of the Sept. 11 terrorists used them to board the planes they hijacked, aided by three illegal immigrants from El Salvador.
Noting that 80 percent of gang members in Northern Virginia are here illegally, Albo is currently working on a bill to make it a state crime (it’s already a federal offense) to be in the U.S. illegally. He wants the Virginia State Police to work with federal officials to enforce immigration laws. Virginia’s illegal immigrant population exceeds 200,000, with 80,000 estimated in Fairfax County alone.
Albo told The Examiner that his bill would circumvent current legal restrictions that allow state and local police officers to only arrest felons who have already been deported. For any other immigration enforcement, they would first have to undergo specialized training and in effect be deputized by the feds, a move most police departments resist because of the cost, as well as fears that the immigrant community will stop cooperating with them in solving crimes.
Albo discounts both objections. “As far as the cost goes, it already costs Fairfax County $250 million per year just to educate the children [of illegals], and you don’t selectively enforce one law and not the other,” he said. But even if the state police and local departments can be persuaded to get on board, daunting problems remain.
“There’s no single list in the world of every citizen of the United States,” Albo noted, so there’s no way a police officer who pulls over a driver can determine that person’s immigration status. The Department of Homeland Security is presently combining five distinct federal databases to make it easier to track violators, but the result will include only names of those previously identified as illegals. As pre-2003 drivers licenses expire and Virginia demands proof of residency before they are reissued, the numbers will lessen somewhat. Right now, however, it is virtually impossible for the police to do anything about illegal immigration — even if they wanted to and had the authority to do so.
Maryland has been informed that unless its Motor Vehicle Administration complies with the federal Real ID Act by 2008, residents will no longer be able to use their drivers licenses or state-issued IDs to board aircraft — or even drive in other states. The Maryland General Assembly has so far refused to comply, so the state became the scene of the first attempt in the nation to seek real enforcement of the federal REAL ID law.
On July 31, Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Brooke Murdock suspended a lawsuit — filed on behalf of 14 illegal aliens by the Takoma Park-based CASA de Maryland and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, claiming that MVA’s refusal to accept foreign documentation was a violation of their constitutional rights. The Immigration Reform Law Institute is challenging that notion on behalf of the 9-11 Families for a Secure America.
Echoing former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous quip about politics, Virginia Congressman Tom Davis points out that, at the end of the day, “all immigration is local.” That’s certainly true in the Washington region, where the Brookings Institution says immigrant numbers now match those in border states like Texas and California, where the federal government continues to make half-hearted efforts to halt the human flood.
But even five years after Sept. 11, hardly anybody is minding what Rep. Davis calls “the internal border.”
