Beebe: Illegal-alien act faulty
Posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/226288/
Gov. Mike Beebe declared his opposition on Monday to a proposed initiated act that would bar illegal aliens from receiving certain state services.
The measure, by a group calling itself Secure Arkansas, would duplicate state and federal laws and increase costs to taxpayers, he said.
“While I oppose illegal immigration, I cannot support this initiative,” Beebe said as the measure’s backers geared up for signature-gathering at polling places across the state today.
Jeannie Burlsworth of Bryant, chairman of Secure Arkansas, said she’s disappointed that Beebe is unwilling to lead on the issue of illegal immigration.
“I would tell the governor that illegal immigration is harming Arkansans and is therefore an Arkansas problem,” she said Monday night.
“The governor is very eager to take our tax dollars but seems less eager to be a good steward of those tax dollars,” Burlsworth said. “The ballot initiative will strengthen and enforce current law while demanding greater oversight by our government.”
Beebe said all of the proposal’s major provisions already are covered by federal or state laws, and the proposal “will create bigger government and cost Arkansans money.”
The governor’s office made available a compilation of citations from the state and national statutory codes compared with provisions of the proposed initiated act.
For example, under the proposal, according to the governor’s office summary, any person who knowingly makes a false statement of representation is subject to criminal penalties for fraudulently obtaining public benefits.
The governor’s office cited Arkansas law 5-36-202, 203, which say, among other things, that a person commits theft of public benefits if he obtains or retains a public benefit from any state agency by means of any false statement, misrepresentation, or impersonation. That’s been law since 1993. It provides criminal penalties.
Passing the proposed initiated act “would merely restate these same laws and add additional bureaucracy to Arkansas in the process,” he said.
Beebe said what’s needed is stronger enforcement of the federal laws that taxpayers pay the federal government to uphold.
“What we don’t need is to duplicate laws and place additional burdens on our state without getting to the roots of this national problem of illegal immigration. If some of the principles of the ballot title make sense to you, it may be because they already are the law of the land,” he said.
Beebe spokesman Matt De-Cample said the governor’s office indicated after Attorney General Dustin McDaniel certified the proposal on May 7 that the governor would make a statement about it after he completed studying it. “That point arrived [Monday ],” he said.
The proposal needs to collect 61, 974 Arkansas registered voters’ signatures on a petition by July 7 to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot.
It would be called, “An act to prevent persons unlawfully present in the United States from receiving certain public benefits.”
It would require state and local governments in Arkansas to verify citizenship or legal residency of most people applying for public benefits. Each applicant would be required to fill out an affidavit saying he’s either a U. S. citizen or a “qualified alien,” a federal term that applies to legal permanent residents, among other aliens.
The government agencies would be required to ensure that recipients are eligible through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program.
A business license is considered as a public benefit under the proposal.
The proposed act would not require evidence of legal status to receive emergency health care, immunizations, treatment or testing for communicable diseases and prenatal care, among other things.
It wouldn’t affect public education, which is what state officials have said is the biggest expense involving illegal aliens. That is federally required. Arkansas reported spending about $ 154 million in the 2006-07 school year teaching children who are learning English, though the state doesn’t have information on what portion of that is for students who are illegal aliens.
A study released last year by the Urban Institute, funded by Arkansas’ Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, reported that aliens and their children have a small but positive net fiscal impact on the state budget. The study found that the state spent $ 237 million in 2004 on education, health services and prison services for aliens, but took in $ 257 million in tax revenue from the same population.
DeCample said he doesn’t have any statewide totals for the extra cost and bureaucracy that Beebe referred to, although “some agencies have started running preliminary numbers.”
The main costs would include record-keeping and the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, he said. In addition to state agencies, this could affect community organizations and providers, he said.