Webb: Illegals broad issue

By Seth McLaughlin

Sen. Jim Webb yesterday said localities and states should do what is in their best interests to address their problems with illegal aliens.
 
"I think it's appropriate for state and local governments to take a position on this," Mr. Webb, a Democrat, told The Washington Times during an interview in his Senate office.
 
"On the one hand, there are going to be people who don't like that, but on the other hand, they still want us to vote for such things as the right of a local community to create a sanctuary," Mr. Webb said. "So if a local community under our system should have the right to create sanctuaries, the local community should have the right to create restrictions when people truly are illegal."
 
Mr. Webb, 61, made the comments in response to questions about recent efforts of local and state officials to crack down on illegal aliens in Virginia.
 
"In a situation of how government services are provided to people who are illegal, I think it is appropriate that local government work that out," he said.
 
While he has said the country needs to secure its borders and he advocated civil and criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens, the freshman senator has remained relatively quiet about the role localities should play in handling the issue.
 
According to a poll conducted before the state's Nov. 6 elections, the problems associated with illegals were an important factor for three-quarters of likely voters.
 
Virginia officials have enacted their own reforms — most notably in Prince William County, where the Board of County Supervisors recently established one of the strictest crackdowns on illegal aliens in the country.
 
Other recent local efforts are also starting to produce dividends.
 
Police in Herndon released statistics this week showing that since June, the 287(g) training from Immigration and Custom Enforcement has allowed them to identify and jail 29 illegal aliens.
 
In addition, Virginia lawmakers next month are expected to begin deliberating more than a dozen additional reforms forwarded to them by the State Crime Commission, including a presumption against bail for criminal illegal aliens and a plan to enter into local-state-federal agreements to build jail space for illegal aliens awaiting deportation.
 
The Times reported yesterday that seven local grass-roots organizations have united to lobby state officials for tougher enforcement of immigration laws.
 
The umbrella group, called Save the Old Dominion, likely will establish a political action committee and file for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status that will allow them to accept donations, which they could use to lobby Virginia lawmakers.
 
For Mr. Webb, who handed Democrats control of the Senate last year after he defeated Republican Sen. George Allen, any solution to the illegal alien issue must fit into the notion of economic fairness for the American worker that he has preached since the early stages of his campaign.
 
A former Reagan administration Navy secretary and best-selling novelist, Mr. Webb won kudos from people on both sides of the debate when he joined a small group of freshman senators in opposing his party leadership's support of President Bush's push for an immigration-reform bill. The bill failed after many equated it to "amnesty" and an "award for illegal behavior."
 
"One of the reasons that the average working person in this country got so enraged with this immigration bill is it violated the basic notions of fairness," he said. "You cannot simply say that every single person who was here as of December 31 of last year should be legalized. That violates every single person's notion of what is fair.
 
"It was just a terrible bill," he added. "It deserved to go down."
 
In response, he pushed, unsuccessfully, to amend the plan to give illegal aliens a path to citizenship as long as they had been in the country for at least four years and met certain criteria such as having a solid job record and a certain level of education.

"Here is the problem. There's two different strains here," he said. "One side is not going to be emotionally satisfied unless everyone here is legalized and the other side is not going to be emotionally satisfied unless every single illegal is gone. Between these two emotional extremes is the question of whether you really want a practical solution or not. That's where I was trying to go during the debate."