By CHRIS POWELL
Hearings of the General Assembly on proposed legislation almost always could use more critical questions, especially when such questions are not merely politically inconvenient but politically incorrect.
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Such was the case the other day when scores of open-borders advocates spoke at the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on legislation proposed by Governor Lamont for more obstruction of immigration law, though the governor, Attorney General William Tong, and most Democratic state legislators keep denying that Connecticut is a “sanctuary state.”
The governor’s legislation would establish “protected areas” where Connecticut would pretend that immigration law enforcement is prohibited — places like schools, hospitals, and churches.
Perhaps most deserving a critical question or two at the hearing was Norma Martinez HoSang, director of the Connecticut for All Coalition, an alliance of open-borders groups. HoSang said: “Families should be able to pray at church services, attend community meals or mosques or synagogues, and gather for holiday celebrations without worrying that law enforcement actions are outside the door. Patients should feel safe going to hospitals for emergency treatment, taking their children to pediatric checkups, or visiting community health clinics for vaccinations and prenatal care.”
No legislator asked simply: Why should someone breaking the law feel safe? Why should someone residing in the country illegally be exempt from immigration law enforcement anywhere?
People who have committed other crimes enjoy no such exemption from arrest. Indeed, anyone who testified at a legislative hearing that suspects in murders, assaults, robberies, or thefts should be exempt from arrest at particular places would be considered ridiculous. Maybe that’s why Connecticut has no law establishing “protected areas” where arresting people is itself a crime.
These “protected areas” are being proposed in Connecticut only to legitimize or facilitate illegal immigration, or, since federal immigration agents are not obliged to respect state-declared “protected areas,” they are being proposed just to strike a politically correct pose.
Connecticut and the country have so much illegal immigration — and have so much crime committed by illegal immigrants, even if, on average, illegal immigrants are better behaved than the native-born — precisely because the country generally and Connecticut in particular are viewed, or until recently were viewed, as being “protected areas.” That is, “sanctuary states.”
Not long ago even leading Democrats acknowledged that a major inducement for illegal immigration was the prospect of receiving government services, including housing, medical care, and education, and even driver’s licenses and other official forms of identification without having to attain citizenship or legal residency.
This prospect became even more of an inducement under the previous national administration when most immigration law enforcement was suspended and millions of people were admitted without review, just told to attend an immigration court hearing at a distant date, whereupon they disappeared into the country and never appeared for their hearings.
Illegal immigrants would not have the fear cited by HoSang and other advocates of open borders — would not have to worry about being hunted — if proof of citizenship or legal residency was required from anyone seeking employment, schooling, housing, medical care, or anything else important in the United States. Living in the country illegally would be too impractical. Illegal immigration has been so easy and extensive only because, through mistaken compassion or political subversion, public policy facilitates it.
If government stops facilitating illegal immigration there will be much less of it. There already is much less now that the new federal administration has re-imposed ordinary control at the border.
Fear of being caught for violating immigration law can justify enacting “protected areas” only if one believes that anyone should be admitted to the country at any time and, if he reaches Connecticut, should be exempt from immigration law enforcement. “Protected areas” can be justified only if one believes that people who fear open borders and resent the crimes committed by illegal immigrants should just pound sand.
With his legislation Governor Lamont has become an enthusiastic nullifier of federal law and advocate of open borders.
Will anyone running against him make an issue of it?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 