Indiana House Considers “Friendlier” Immigration Bill
The Indiana General Assembly has been considering a bill that would address immigration issues within Indiana. The original bill resembled the law passed in Arizona that allows law enforcement officers to make inquiries about a person’s immigration status after making an otherwise lawful stop. The Indiana bill has been significantly amended and no longer contains many of the provisions that have drawn criticism of the Arizona law.
The Arizona law has been extremely controversial and is currently being challenged as unconstitutional in a lawsuit initiated by the federal government. That lawsuit is pending, but the impact on Arizona’s travel and convention business was immediate and profound, with $1,000,000’s of lost tourism and convention sales resulting from protests to the law’s passage. Many have feared that Indiana would lose even more in tourism and particularly convention business, if Indiana passed an Arizona-styled immigration law. Some convention organizers have already threatened to pull scheduled business out of Indiana, and other industry experts think dozens of large conventions could be lost to Indiana. Much of the debate about the Indiana immigration law has focused on the law’s potential economic impact on Indiana with lost travel, tourism and convention visitors refusing to come to Indiana.
The timing of the Indiana immigration bill is interesting, as Indiana just opened an expended convention center in Indianapolis, after razing the RCA Hoosier Dome and building the Lucas oil Stadium, as part of a multi-million effort to draw more conventioneers to Central Indiana. Then, there is the anticipated 2012 Super Bowl, which is currently at issue with the NFL labor dispute dragging on through court-ordered mediation. Local officials have not been pleased that the immigration law has been openly debated in the press, while those officials are struggling to attract new conventions, trade shows and tourism to Central Indiana to fill a new and very large convention center during the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Ironically, all these factors have probably made the passage of the bill more difficult, despite high unemployment and growing frustration that the federal government is not adequately addressing illegal immigration. As a result, the bill has been changed substantially. The bill now focuses on imposing tax penalties against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The final bill might contain a provision that would require Indiana to determine the costs of illegal immigration and seek reimbursement from the U.S. Congress.