TOPEKA — House members shared personal family history Thursday as they discredited anti-immigrant rhetoric that echoed through committee hearings earlier in the legislative session.
But the House still approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 1602, a nonbinding statement urges the governor to help secure the U.S. border with Mexico and work with federal authorities to enforce immigration laws.
Proponents of the bill, including Attorney General Kris Kobach, law enforcement officers and Republican legislators, routinely used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants who don’t have legal residency in the United States. Some of the proponents spread false narratives about fentanyl trafficking and emphasized that simply being in the country without legal status makes immigrants criminals, though that is a civil offense rather than a crime.
The Senate adopted the resolution by a 31-9 party line vote on Jan. 29.
Rep. Angela Martinez, a Wichita Democrat who said her grandmother raised seven kids and “died an undocumented immigrant,” took issue with a proponent of the resolution who said during a committee hearing that “we are a nation of laws.”
“And I say to that, is it a crime to want a better life? Is it a crime to not want to be surrounded by violence, drugs and unrest, to not be able to live in peace? And I ask you to imagine what that would be like to live like that,” Martinez said during Thursday’s debate.
Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, identified herself as the proud daughter of an immigrant father from Mexico. She said he worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad for 50 years in Texas, became a U.S. citizen and learned English. But he never looked down on anyone else who came to country, she said.
Ruiz asserted the country has a broken immigration system and that Congress declined an opportunity last year to start to fix it.
“Instead, they used immigrants as a political edge, depicting immigrants as spoiling the blood of U.S., as rapists, as drug dealers, taking away our U.S. jobs and using our resources. And none of this is true,” Ruiz said. “The drug dealing? Perhaps. But look at research and look at more than one source to look at where the fentanyl is coming from. It is not coming from the moms who are bringing their children because they’re escaping turmoil from their own country.”
Rep. Bill Bloom, a Republican farmer from Clay Center, said one of his best friends had walked across the Rio Grande with his family as a child. Bloom said the friend herded the family’s sheep, and for 45 years, “he worked like a dog.”
The friend’s five children were all lawyers or engineers, Bloom said.
“I know we don’t like the way that people came here, but they’re here,” Bloom said. “If they’re decent and they work hard, we deserve to give them a chance.”
Rep. Brooklynne Mosley, a Lawrence Democrat, said immigrants pay more taxes than billionaires and commit crimes a rate lower than American-born citizens.
Most immigrants who don’t have legal status, she said, have overstayed their visas.
“People are not getting picked up on the corners committing crimes,” Mosley said. “They’re getting picked up from their jobs, the jobs to help this country run.”
She said the resolution would compel the state “to be part of what is essentially creating a Brownshirt-esque unit,” a reference to the paramilitary unit that protected Nazis.
Rep. Ford Carr, a Wichita Democrat, said federal immigration enforcement efforts are supposed to target those who have committed “some sort of heinous crime,” but that’s not always the practice. He said the resolution before the House “doesn’t make sense” and is “extremely unfair.”
Carr also referenced the Legislature’s longstanding failure to fully pay for special education needs in public schools.
“We don’t have enough money to fund special ed, but we’re going to potentially allocate funds for protection at the border, which, last I checked, we don’t border another country here in Kansas,” Carr said.
Rep. Melissa Oropeza, a Kansas City Democrat, said she wanted to call attention to support for the resolution by the Kansas Catholic Conference, the Kansas City, Kansas, archdiocese and the bishops of Kansas. She questioned the merits of religious groups getting involved in policy and wondered if they had “forgotten their own teachings.”
“I will not allow the Catholic Church to hide in the shadows as they have done in the past. History will not repeat itself on my watch,” Oropeza said. “The Pope has spoken out against this type of policy. I will not allow the priests to stand alone at the pulpit in the state of Kansas, calming the flocks of Kansas Latinos and immigrants and all nationalities, as middle management, AKA the bishops and the archdiocese, endorses this type of resolution against immigrants and Latinos, then in the same breath ask for donations from the very same immigrants and Latino communities across the state.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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