FRIENDS OF NEW MARYLANDERS:

OPPOSING ANTI-IMMIGRANT PROPOSALS

This year, dozens of bills have been introduced that target immigrant families for hostile treatment by the courts, police, and
government agencies. While we understand that Marylanders are frustrated with the lack of progress on comprehensive
immigration reform at a national level, we believe that this hstration is best targeted at members of Congress, rather than the
families picking crops, constructing buildings, and watching children. Among these bills are proposals setting a lawkl status
requirement for drivers licenses, declaring English the official language, outlawing municipal pro-immigrant ordinances, requiring
the police (including the Baltimore City Schools police) to enforce immigration law, and allowing the impeachment of government
officials that act in a manner that conflicts with immigration law.

WHY ARE THESE LAWS BAD?

This is a Waste of Resources to Correct a "Problem" that Doesn't Exist
All immigrants, but most especially undocumented immigrants and their families, dramatically underutilize public benefits.
As the Congressional Research Service points out in a 2007 report, undocumented immigrants, who comprise nearly one-
third of all immigrants in the country, are not eligible to receive public "welfare" benefits-ever. Legal permanent residents
(LPRs) must pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems for approximately 10 years before they are eligible to
receive benefits when they retire. In most cases, LPRs can not receive SSI, which is available only to U.S. citizens, and
are not eligible for means-tested public benefits until 5 years after receiving their green cards.
A 2007 analysis of welfare data by researchers at the Urban Institute reveals that less than 1 percent of households headed
by undocumented immigrants receive cash assistance for needy families, compared to 5 percent of households headed by
native-born U.S. citizens.
Research on similar measures in other states show that it is actually U.S. citizens who struggle to comply or are scared
away. An illustrative example is the decline in coverage caused by the heightened citizenship proof requirements on
Medicaid recipients.

U.S. Citizens and Legal Immigrants Will Have Difficultv Proving Lawful Presence
To implement some of these proposals, everyone in Maryland will have to more frequently prove their immigration status, yet
many U.S. born U.S. citizens lackthe documentation needed to prove their U.S. citizenship. For example:
Seven percent of the American citizens surveyed responded that they do nit have ready access to U.S. passports,
naturalization papers, or birth certificates. Applying this figure to 2006 figures for Maryland means that nearly 400,000
Marylanders could not prove their U.S. citizenship or even "lawfkl presence" in a timely manner.
Twelve percent of those earning $25,000 a year or less do not have ready access to U.S. passports, naturalization papers,
or birth certificates.
Only 48% of voting-age women with ready access to their U.S. birth certificates have a birth certificate with current legal
name - and only 66% of voting-age women with ready access to any proof of citizenship have a document with current
legal name.
Multiple studies show that the elderly, racial minorities, and people with mental illnesses are among the least likely to
have the requisite proof of status.

It is Extremely Difficult and Complicated to Determine Who is Subject to Deportation

and Who is Not
Federal immigration law is incredibly complex. Pushing hearing examiners, court commissioners, MVA staff, or the police into
the business of determining deportability is not the answer and will only lead to more broken families and unjust results.

There are only four people in the state of Maryland legally authorized to determine whether someone is deportable or not and these
are the four immigration judges who sit in Maryland.

Specialized Officials at ICE Make Grave Errors: Deporting U.S. Citizens

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials can make preliminary determinations, but recent testimony before Congress -
shows that even these specialized experts make mistakes.
In February 2007, a developmentally disabled U.S. citizen named Luis Guzman was deported to Mexico without the
benefit of an attorney. For Pedro Guzman, removal meant 89 days eating out of garbage cans and bathing in canals while
 seeking to return to the United States. Mr. Guzman told his family that he had tried to reenter the United States at San
Ysidro but had been repeatedly turned away. He then walked 100 miles east to reach the border crossing at Mexicali. Mr.
Guzman returned to the United States fearfhl, stuttering, and no longer able to communicate in English.
In 2000, developmentally disabled U.S. citizen Sharon McNight, was shackled to a chair overnight, and deported to
Jamaica, where airport workers pooled their money to give her bus fare. It took the interventions of members of Congress
for the mistake to be rectified.
In 2001, Deolinda Smith-Willmore, a partially blind, seventy-one-year-old United States citizen with schizophrenia, was
processed through administrative removal in 2001. For reasons that appear to have been related to her mental illness, Ms.
Smith-Willmore identified herself as Dominican while serving time in prison for assaulting a neighbor. In fact, she was
born in Ossining, New York. Ms. Smith-Willmore was placed in administrative removal and deported to the Dominican
Republic. According to Ms. Smith-Willmore, she informed immigration officers of her United States citizenship while
detained, but no attempt was made to verify her claim, and she was not referred to an immigration judge. Upon her arrival
in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican government housed her in a nursing home and obtained a United States
attorney for her who easily obtained a copy of her birth certificate. Even after the government admitted its mistake in
deporting her, it refused to issue her documents that would permit her to return to the United States under her real name
until the media took interest in the case.
One native-born U.S. citizen, accused of making a false claim to U.S. citizenship upon arriving on a flight from Mexico,
was threatened with twenty years imprisonment, left to sleep on the floor in a detention area at the airport, and then
imprisoned for over six weeks before his claim to citizenship was validated by an immigration judge.
A United States citizen, a rehgee of the Ethiopian civil war whose parents' naturalized before his eighteenth birthday,
was detained for a year and a half before an immigration judge recognized his citizenship. The delay was due to ICE'S
transposition of two numbers in its translation of his birth certificate, an error that made it appear that he was over
eighteen at the time his parents had naturalized.
If even ICE makes mistakes that lead to the grave injustice of U.S. citizens being deported, why would we want to expand this
power to hearing examiners and commissioners considering parole?

Despite the Tenor of These Bills, Immigrants, Including Undocumented Immigrants,

Benefit our State
Maryland's immigrants are found in every county and city, every occupation, every school system. From surgeons to seafood
workers, immigrants are filling vital jobs aid the state's kconoiic growth. -we are here, we are active, and we vote. We
are your friends and neighbors, co-congregants at your faith center, and work side by side with you at your job. We, together with
you, are Maryland.
Between one-half and three quarters of undocumented immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, medicare, and
social security. It is estimated by the Social Security Administration that three quarters of undocumented residents in US
pay social security taxes and buffer the fund by more than ten billion dollars a year.
Foreign workers accounted for 49% of the labor force growth between 1995 and 2005.
Across US, immigrant workers compose 41% of ag workers, 33% of grounds and maintenance workers, 22% of food and
construction workers, and a majority of PhDs in computer science and engineering. Nationally, one out of 4 domestic
workers are undocumented and in Montgomery County, it is a majority.
In 2012, Latino buying power will be 1.2 trillion annually and Asian will be 670 billion.
In 2002, Hispanic f m s provided jobs to 1.5 million employees with an annual payroll of 36.7 billion. Asian f m s
provided jobs in the same year to 2.2 million empIoyees with an annual payroll of 56 billion.