States Take On Border Issues

    Frustrated by congressional inaction and pushed by rising anger at home, legislatures across the country are debating a variety of tough new restrictions on illegal immigrants.

    For years, states deferred to the federal government on immigration matters, but as illegal immigrants have spread throughout the country and Congress has been unable to pass an immigration reform bill, that has changed.

    In the first six months of last year, states considered about 300 immigration-related bills and passed 36 of them, the National Conference of State Legislatures said.

    This year, the proposals include cutting off benefits to illegal immigrants, allowing local police to identify those in the country illegally and, in Arizona, sending National Guard troops to secure the Mexican border.

    "You can say it's a federal problem all you want, but the truth is it's in your backyard so the problem's yours," said Susan Tully of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce illegal immigration.

    President Bush last year called for beefing up border security and a guest-worker program to allow migrants to work legally in the U.S. But the proposal stalled in Congress, and states said they were forced to act to control illegalimmigration.

    But since 1990, there has been a tenfold increase in the number of illegal immigrants living outside these areas. States far from the Mexican border, such as Minnesota and New Hampshire, began fielding complaints about the proliferation of Spanish-language signs and increased burdens on public hospitals and schools.

    "What is new is the extent of immigration, some of it legal, some of it not, in new communities across the country," said John Trasvina of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "They don't know how to deal with it so they freak out and pass laws."