By Bryan Corbin, Evansville Courier & Press
INDIANAPOLIS - Borrowing a tactic from their opponents, the supporters of a three-strikes immigration bill gathered lawmakers and a Los Angeles minister onto the same stage to make the case for letting the bill get a final vote.
Whether the three-strikes legislation, now contained in Senate Bill 345, advances any further won't be decided until Thursday at the earliest. Midnight Friday is the deadline to pass bills and adjourn for the year.
State Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, and state Rep. Vern Tincher, D-Terre Haute, renewed their call Tuesday for final action on the hybrid version of their bill, which, among other things, says companies caught employing illegal immigrants three times in seven years could lose their Indiana business licenses. It also would seek to have the State Police trained to enforce federal immigration laws.
Different versions of the bill have passed by wide margins in the Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate, but that's not the end of the process.
A four-member conference committee - one Republican and Democrat each from the House and Senate - then must hammer out a compromise between the two versions. All four conferees must sign off on it before the compromise can go to the full House and Senate for a final vote.
Democratic House Speaker Patrick Bauer adjourned that chamber Monday without appointing House conferees. The House won't be in session until Thursday, leaving little time for the conferees to be named, meet and reach accord on the bill.
If it doesn't pass by Friday, the bill is dead for the year.
Tincher said he was confident that House leaders would let the conference committee proceed.
But Delph said it "will send a loud message" if outspoken opponents of the three-strikes bill were appointed to that committee and then ran out the clock on the bill this session. None have been named yet.
One of those opponents, however, contended that lawmakers have learned of "serious constitutional problems" in the bill and are reluctant to rush it to a vote.
"As the constitutional problems become more glaring, people are taking a step back," Rep. Mike Murphy, R-Indianapolis, said. "Everyone is for enforcing the federal immigration laws, but it has to be within the Constitution."
Murphy was the lone House Republican who attended a news conference last week organized by several ministers opposing the three-strikes bill, along with five House Democrats. Opponents urged that it be reassigned to a summer study commission.
A group supporting the bill, the Indiana Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, or IFIRE, countered Tuesday by organizing their own public event in the same Statehouse room opponents used last week. Highlighting their effort was a minister from South Central Los Angeles, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, president of Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny or BOND.
Responding to the ministers who spoke out against the bill last week, Peterson added, "Yes, God wants us to love our neighbors, but he also wants our neighbors to obey the law."
Business groups and activists for the Hispanic community have opposed the three-strikes bill, saying it could lead to businesses being penalized and racial profiling. Border security advocates have complained that the bill does not go far enough to punish undocumented aliens for entering the U.S. illegally.