Dr Kent’s Blog

• I can’t believe you voted no/didn’t vote on HB 2280, Sen. Pearce’s anti-sanctuary bill. How dare you! You were elected to help Americans, not illegal aliens.
• Your opposition to the bill will result in a continuation of sanctuary policies that protect criminals, displace benefits for needy Arizonians, and make it easier for unauthorized workers to compete for jobs with citizens and legal immigrants.
• Sanctuary policies directly violate Federal law and should have been made unlawful in Arizona. You chose not to do that. When were you, as an elected official, authorized to choose which laws the state will obey?
• The safe havens created by sanctuary policies make it easier for illegal aliens, including criminal aliens, to live undetected in Arizona. How many citizens, including officers of the law, have to die or be maimed before you will stand up and fight back?
• When public assistance agencies are prevented from inquiring about an applicant’s immigration status, benefits are distributed to ineligible illegal aliens. Don’t you understand? Sanctuary policies are displacing benefits for needy Arizonians in this terrible recession. And taxpayers are being forced to foot the bill.
• With skyrocketing unemployment, we need to employ every measure that makes it harder for illegal aliens to remain in the state and compete for jobs with citizens and legal immigrants. You, however, chose another course – protecting illegal-alien jobs.
• As a Republican, you obviously don’t care that the State Republican Party unanimously passed a resolution supporting Sen. Pearce’s bill. I guess you also don’t care that it was endorsed by numerous law enforcement organizations – at least those who haven’t had long-standing ties with open-borders groups and cheap-labor business lobbies. I guess you only care about getting re-elected. Do you really think that will be easy to do after your vote/failure to vote on a bill so critical to the people that elected you?

This legislation, in its original form as passed by the Senate a few days prior, was SB 1175. Rep. Driggs, a long-time opponent of immigration enforcement, derailed that bill’s chances by refusing to hear it in his committee. In order to keep the measure alive, Sen. Pearce placed the bill’s language on HB 2280, which had already passed the House and only needed a “concurrence” vote to clear the measure. The Senate passed HB 2289 on July 1, but when the House voted on the bill a few hours later, Republican opponents left the Capitol so they would not have to vote.