Updates For Immigration
Patricia Morrison
Issue date: 4/8/10 Section: News
The 128th Ohio General Assembly is currently debating two bills concerning illegal immigration. Both bills have passed in the senate, where they were originally introduced.
SB 35, sponsored by Republicans Bill Seitz and Jimmy Stewart, provides for the enforcement of immigration law by Ohio police.
SB 150 is sponsored by Republican Garry Cates and would both allow sheriffs to take illegal aliens into custody at the request of a board of county commissioners and would explicitly authorize state and local officials to assist federal immigration officials.
This bill contains the same provisions as SB 260 of the 127th General Assembly, which was also passed by the senate but failed to become law.
Both bills were introduced into the House of Representatives March 25. The house has not yet taken any action on either bill.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), there were an estimated 115,000 illegal immigrants living in Ohio illegally as of the 2007.
While that means that illegal immigrants account for less than 10 percent of the state's population, Ohio's illegal immigration rate is still higher than the 7.9 percent national average.
According to FAIR, the annual cost to Ohio taxpayers for emergency medical care, education and incarceration projected is currently $224 million.
Those costs were expected to rise to $372 million per year this year and to $627 million per year by 2020.
Full text of both bills is available at http://www.legislature.state.oh.us.
By Patricia Morrison
Chief copy editor
pmorriso@capital.edu
