Bill on illegal aliens fails in committee by three votes

— A bill to keep illegal aliens from getting publicly funded benefits was rejected by a state House of Representatives committee Wednesday despite repeated requests bythe sponsor for an opportunity to change the bill.

Lawmakers said the bill only duplicated what’s already federal laws.

The bill’s sponsor blamed Gov. Mike Beebe, who said the sponsor got a fair hearingand should stop “whining.”

House Bill 1292 by Rep. Jon Hubbard, R-Jonesboro, would limit state-funded services for people in the country illegally to only emergency care, with the exception of those services whose denialis prohibited by federal law. Federal law restricts public services to illegal aliens to such things as education, immunizations and emergency medical treatment and prohibits states from denying those.

States can provide some additional services with their own money. Arkansas is one of 11 that provide prenatal care regardless of the mother’s legal status, according to the National ImmigrationLaw Center. That policy was implemented when Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was governor and saw it as consistent with pro-life and fiscally sound aims.

The Committee on State Agencies and Governmental Affairs defeated a motion that was made to move the bill forward by a vote of 9 against to 8 in favor. It needed 11 votes to get out of the committee. The vote was along party lines, with Republicans in favor of sending the bill to the House.

The bill can be brought up in committee again, but Hubbard said he hasn’t decided if he will try.

The meeting lasted several hours. Five people testified in favor of the bill, including several members of advocacy group Secure Arkansas. Seven people testified against it, including the state Municipal League and a handful of state residents.

Secure Arkansas has made two failed attempts to get a proposed constitutional amendment restricting services for illegal aliens on the ballot.

Hubbard and other committee members offered four amendments to the bill to try to make it more palatable to other members, including adding prenatal care to the benefits for which an illegal alien is eligible. All were approved.

“I was encouraged somewhat that it might have a chance to pass by doing those things. It just goes to show you, you try to accommodate people and do what they’re trying to tell you in the committee questions that they want done and then they still don’t do it,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard initially told the committee that prenatal care attracts illegal aliens to the state. He said the amendment was in response to the committee’s concern and he did not think the bill would pass without the change.

The bill did not specifically state which benefits were being banned. Committee members pointed to several public benefits that are already prohibited under federal law

Rep. Linda Tyler, D-Conway, questioned whether using the word “benefit” gave people the impression that the bill would do more thanit actually would.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about what I believe you believe this bill ought to do in terms of benefits,” she said.

Hubbard said the point of the bill was to stop giving any benefit to people who are in the country illegally.

“If you’re here illegally, you’re not supposed to be here in the first place, and we should not be giving you any incentive to be here regardless of what those benefits might be,” Hubbard said.

He tried unsuccessfully to pull the bill from committee to make further changes.

“This bill was not going to be approved in this committee,” Hubbard said after the meeting. “I could have taken everything out they told me to take out, and I think the vote result probably would have been the same.”

The bill would have also required public agencies to track the use of or attempted use of benefits by illegal aliens. There is no central reporting on the useof public services by illegal immigrants, and few state agencies said they track illegal aliens’ use of public services.

Hubbard, who has previously accused the governor of strong-arming lawmakers to vote against certain conservative bills, said, “I don’t think the governor wanted this bill passed and probably did what ever he could do to see it didn’t pass. He was successful. I think we’ve seen several good bills brought to the committees in this session, and most of them have not gotten out of committees. We’ve let political power get in the way of doing what’s right for the people of Arkansas.”

In early February, Hubbard’s “strong-arm” accusation was in an open letter he sent to the governor accusing Beebe of “less than honorable tactics” to swaylegislators.

Beebe said that if Hubbard “wants to say that I didn’t like the bill and so spoke, he is absolutely right. And if he thinks there’s something wrong with that process, he doesn’t know how this process works.”

“He doesn’t need to be whining about me,“ Beebe said. “Part of my job as governor is to tell folks how I feel about legislation, good and bad.”

Beebe said he had problems with not allowing prenatal care for children who would become citizens in Arkansas and not providing immunizations.

“I thought it was meanspirited,” Beebe said. “I didn’t think you ought to treat kids that way. ... I thought that was mean, and I thought that was not good public policy. It was going to cost a lot of money and put our legal citizens through a whole bunch of extra steps when they got their car license, when they accessed any services.”

Beebe pointed out that everyone who wanted to testify before the committee was given a chance.

“There were some great questions asked in a long, long hearing where everybody got their say, which is a testament to that committee,” said Beebe, who served 20 years in the state Senate before becoming attorney general and then governor.

The House Education Committee refused to reconsider a bill Tuesday that would deny illegal aliens access to in-state tuition rates, which are cheaper than rates for out-of-state students.

The sponsor of House Bill 1008, Rep. Justin Harris, R-West Fork, said he wants to bring up the bill in committee again.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/24/2011

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