17 January 2008
Immigration Debate Hits Home in Virginia Beach, Virginia
Illegal immigration important issue to many Virginia 2nd District voters
Washington -- In March 2007, a drunken driver killed two teenage girls and changed the immigration debate in the coastal city of Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Immigration is one of the most common topics discussed on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. While presidential candidates debate how to make U.S. borders more secure and how to improve federal immigration guidelines, state and local governments are reviewing their own immigration policies.
Virginia Beach, with a population of more than 435,000 and the largest city in the Virginia 2nd Congressional District, is one of those cities reviewing how it deals with illegal immigrants after a local incident received national attention.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit organization aiming to curb illegal immigration, estimates that currently there are about 13 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, about 205,000 of whom reside in Virginia. Counting illegal immigrants is extremely difficult, and there is no reliable estimate of the number living in Virginia Beach.
On March 30, 2007, 22-year-old Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico driving with a blood-alcohol concentration three times the legal limit, crashed his car into one driven by 17-year-old Alison Kunhardt. Kunhardt and 16-year-old passenger Tessa Tranchant were killed. Ramos recently was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his actions and then will be deported.
Before the accident, Ramos had been convicted three times of misdemeanor crimes involving alcohol use. Following department policy, police did not inquire about Ramos' immigration status when he was arrested during those three incidents.
The teens' deaths had an enormous effect on the local community. Residents held a heated debate about how police interact with illegal immigrants. That debate was waged in the "Letters to the Editor" pages of the local newspaper.
In their letters, many citizens said that had police known about Ramos' immigration status, he would have been deported after his previous offenses and therefore the deaths would not have happened. Others argued that residents were unfairly blaming immigration rules instead of focusing on the need to prevent people from drinking and driving.
Virginia Beach's debate became a national one when popular conservative television pundit Bill O'Reilly accused Virginia Beach’s mayor, Meyera Oberndorf, of operating a "sanctuary city." After seeing the show, dozens of residents called and wrote their local, state and federal leaders asking for an explanation of the city’s laws regarding illegal immigration. Others from across the state and country called for an end to “sanctuary cities.”
The term "sanctuary city" sometimes is used to describe a jurisdiction that in one way or another limits its assistance to federal immigration authorities trying to apprehend illegal immigrants. In some cases, it simply may be because of fiscal or staffing constraints.
U.S. law prohibits states and cities from withholding information on a person's immigration status. However, some localities have implemented "sanctuary policies" that prohibit local officials, such as police officers, from asking about a person's immigration status. Therefore, in a city with such a policy, local officials have no information to share with federal officers seeking immigration information. At the time of the drunken-driving accident, Virginia Beach rules prohibited police officers from asking those arrested for misdemeanors (relatively minor crimes) about their immigration status.
Opponents say that these policies encourage illegal immigration and undermine federal efforts to stop it. Those who support these policies argue that investigating a person’s immigration status undermines community relations and human rights or interferes with local law enforcement efforts.
The appropriateness of sanctuary policies has been debated on a national stage as well, particularly in the Republican presidential race.
On the campaign trail, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, has defended his city’s policies, which included not allowing police to inquire about a person’s immigration status when that person reported a crime. “It would have been absurd to ask illegal immigrants reporting crimes about their illegal immigrant status,” Giuliani said in a January 10 debate. Giuliani said this policy “helped to bring crime down [in New York] more than in any city in America.”
At the same debate, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson argued that allowing “sanctuary cities” encourages illegal immigration and should be stopped by limiting federal funding to these cities.
In Virginia, the debate still goes on, not just in Virginia Beach, but across the state and in the state capital, Richmond, where a number of bills aimed at curbing illegal immigration are being considered. One bill would deny bail to illegal immigrants arrested for a crime and another would make it a crime for a business to hire illegal immigrants.
Groups both for and against these bills are watching the debate closely in Richmond. Groups focused on curbing illegal immigration support many of these bills. On the other side, many businesses are organizing opposition to the bill that would penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants, while immigrant-advocacy groups are closely watching bills that they believe discriminate against both legal and illegal immigrants.
Virginia Beach officials have been reviewing their immigration policies since that March 2007 night and have made one significant change: now police officials are required to investigate the immigration status of any person arrested and brought to their jails. The city continues its policy of not inquiring about a person’s immigration status if he or she is a victim of or witness to a crime.
The debate over illegal immigration also continues in Virginia Beach, and is expected to be among the top concerns when voters elect their mayor, congressional representative, senator and president this November.
