Immigration and the Border

Illustration By Doug Potter

Security for Whom? In November, Gov. Rick Perry made campaign promises about his $100 million virtual-border program, promises that almost fell flat when the House Appropriations Committee noticed he never requested that sum in his budget. After sorting out that accounting problem, Perry's major proposal was House Bill 13, the homeland- and border-security bill. This would formalize "homeland security" as part of the Governor's Office and create an advisory Border Security Council. However, following a brutal House debate last Thursday, the bill was kicked back to committee over concerns it would grant too much power to the governor and not enough to local law enforcement. There is a consensus in the Lege that something has to be done about border security, whether to deal with undocumented migrants or cross-border drug cartels. But fresh from battles with Perry over his handling of human-papillomavirus vaccinations and the Texas Youth Commission and his attempts to transfer several state agencies to his purview, the Lege seems to have little will to give him more power on the border.

If We Had the Money: Despite much rhetoric about illegal immigration, the House Border & International Affairs Committee and its Senate sibling, International Relations & Trade, have not really spent much time on border security. Instead, they concentrated on trying to improve basic living conditions for residents along the border, most especially in the rapidly growing colonias. Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, passed to the House her Senate Bill 99, to collect data on utility and service provision in these communities. There it meets Brownsville Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr.'s SB 781, which would hold developers of illegal colonias, rather than residents, liable for connecting houses to water and sewage systems. Enforcement will be questionable, since funding for dedicated investigators of colonias has fallen out of the proposed budget.

Sound and Fury: While the Lege has made little progress on immigration, a stack of bills is built around the same idea: Place more responsibility on local government and agencies to verify status. For example, HB 2988 would have police officers asking about immigration status, while HB 159 would require universities to check the immigration status of Texas residents before charging them resident-rate tuition fees. Several bills came out of committee last week, but that may still be too late for them to make it through both chambers before sine die. The State Affairs chair, Rep. David Swinford, R-Amarillo, became so concerned that these bills may be unconstitutional that he had Attorney General Greg Abbott check if they would withstand court challenges, and he's become increasingly vocal that immigration is not a state but a federal issue.