Going on the Offensive is Considered Offensive
by Gary Gately
And they wanted to do something about it close to home.
Two Maryland legislators, Dels. Patrick L. McDonough and Richard K. Impallaria, both Baltimore County Republicans, took their crusade to crack down on illegal immigration to the state legislature this year. What followed were legislative fireworks extraordinaire and a public airing of an issue that has already been dealt with in neighboring states.
The two lawmakers introduced a flock of bills that would have created a task force to study the financial impact of illegal immigrants on Maryland's job market; required law-enforcement officers to detain and turn over to federal authorities anyone they determined to be an illegal immigrant; penalized people who knowingly lend their cars to illegal immigrants; and still another that would have prevented illegal immigrants from getting a Maryland driver's license in the first place.
Impallaria explains that concerns about illegal immigration were heightened by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the role of Lee Boyd Malvo, a teen-ager who was in the country illegally at the time he participated in the Washington-area sniper attacks. Those are examples, McDonough says, that are backed up by federal statistics that show some 400,000 illegal immigrants have been charged with felonies in the United States, including 66 accused of murder.
Their charges have resonated here: A Baltimore County police officer was killed in 2001 when his car collided with a vehicle driven by a drunken driver who was in the country illegally.
The proposed legislation, though, was met with opposition. In March, a shouting match and scuffle between the two delegates and advocates for immigrants' rights erupted outside a House of Delegates hearing room in Annapolis. The incident occurred in a hallway, and McDonough said he had raised his right arm to block a labor union director who had run toward him."I thought he would knock me over or something," McDonough said. "I really just wanted to stop him. To protect myself."
Urbanite asked Impallaria and McDonough to talk about the bills– eventually killed in committee – and the reasoning behind their crusade.
Impallaria: “This is a new, burgeoning issue in the state of Maryland. We decided we really need to go on the offensive on this instead of just the defensive, to give law enforcement more power. All of this legislation that we put forward has nothing to do with legal immigration. We are 100 percent in support of legal immigration. And we believe that the country was founded on the melting-pot belief that people from all different nations should come in. If you allow one group to come in illegally, you're taking away opportunities for people from other countries. It's just not fair to the rest of the world who are waiting in line. Most groups that support immigration do not support illegal immigration because they're waiting in line and waiting their turn to get here.
"If we're going to get serious about homeland security, then we need our law enforcement to be trained to look out for people who are here illegally. If you don't get a crackdown on illegal immigration coming into the country, you're not going to be able to get a control on the criminal element that's coming in with them, and you're not going to be able to get a control on the terrorists coming in with them. Thirty-three states this year passed legislation to crack down on illegal immigration – Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware are three of them. Now what Maryland is doing, Maryland is sending a message of laying out the welcome mat for illegals, saying we will reward you with instate tuition and a driver's license. If you're in a bordering state cracking down on this, where are you going to go? What we're saying is, this is sending a dangerous message because it's attracting even more people to the state of Maryland who are coming illegally. Illegals get workers' compensation if neither they nor their employers paid a dime in."
McDonough: "In 1990, there were 900,000 illegal immigrants in the United States, mostly on the West Coast and in border states like Arizona. Today, there are 10 [million] to 14 million, and that's clearly a revolutionary change. And they're in every state in the country, so that's something that people must understand. We're not dealing with this issue because there's been a slight change. There's been a revolutionary change, and it has a revolutionary impact on our country, on our system, health care, education, crime, job competition.
"We decided that we had a serious problem that we had to address. This year, we went on the offensive, and we created quite a stir, and it was the first inning of a nine-inning ball game. Almost every poll taken in America indicates that the people are on our side overwhelmingly. I think people are seriously concerned there are so many illegal immigrants in the country that they're becoming very visible. They're starting to have an impact on our lives. [Illegal immigration] is a violation of federal law, and it is a felony. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are a nation of legal immigrants. I view [a crackdown on illegal immigration] with a sense of absolute necessity. We are living in one of those defining moments in American history. Political leaders are ignoring the problem or playing politics and pandering to certain ethnic groups, and most Americans know this, and they're angry and they want action."
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