Immigration debate fades as issue this GA session

RICHMOND

As a wedge issue in Virginia politics, illegal immigration is so 2008 .

A topic that once packed hearing rooms and sparked fierce debate in state government corridors barely registers today.

To some political activists, the diminished attention is a sign the issue has been worked over like a battered piñata emptied of its rewards.

About 130 immigration-related bills were introduced last year; about 30 were proposed this year, said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga , a longtime lobbyist for Latino issues.

“Political issues have a kind of product development curve, and this one peaked,” she said.

That isn’t a universal sentiment, however.

Some who want tougher state laws say illegal immigration concerns are overshadowed by recession woes but will resurface when the economy rebounds.

“When the construction industry comes roaring back, and it eventually will, that will drive in cheap, illegal labor,” and the debate is “going to happen all over again,” says Greg Letiecq, executive director of Save The Old Dominion, a group that advocates legislation to curb illegal immigration.

Elected leaders and activists say the lull can be traced to several factors: the predominance of economic worries; topic exhaustion; the passage of several laws in recent years; and the failure of illegal immigration to reliably produce election victories for politicians who have seized on the issue.

“I don’t think there’s any less concern from those people who are concerned about illegal immigration, but I think there is an acknowledg ment by the policymakers up here that we have taken whatever responsible action that we can take,” said Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach.

Stolle carried several immigration-reform bills, including measures to deny bail to incarcerated aliens and to have correctional officers check the immigration status of prisoners. Both are now state law.

Some Northern Virginia local governments also have adopted practices aimed at reducing what they see as the ill effects of illegal immigration on their communities.

But enforcement problems can arise out of the labyrinth of overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, local, state and federal laws.

While much of the initial immigration debate focused on Northern Virginia, Letiecq said it was a South Hampton Roads tragedy in 2007 that galvanized the anti-illegal immigration movement in the state.

That spring two Virginia Beach teenagers, Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, were killed in a car crash by Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant.

“The outrage over that is what drove everything,” Letiecq said .

From there, battle lines were drawn and rhetoric intensified.

Two years later, some laws have been added to the books and other proposals have been repeatedly dismissed by state legislators.

Anti-immigration advocates say not enough has been done.

“There is a fundamental erosion of law, a violation of law,” said John Kwapisz, of the Virginia Council for Immigration Reform. “This is about fairness.”

Activists for undocumented people, meanwhile, see some of the law changes as the unjust vilification of some ethnic groups.

The debate is likely to rise again, said Democratic Sen. Charles Colgan, whose district in Prince William County is ground zero

for the immigration debate. But for now “it’s just kind of fizzled out.”

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com