Beilenson to Introduce Bills on Immigrants : Congress: The lawmaker wants to deny citizenship to children of illegal residents and require ID cards to prove eligibility to work.

Calling illegal immigration “one of the fastest-growing and most serious problems facing our nation,” Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) plans to introduce today a series of bills intended to stem the influx.

Similar measures have been sponsored by other lawmakers in the past without success. During the last session of Congress, Beilenson backed such legislation authored by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley).

Beilenson said he hopes to fuel the effort by making it more bipartisan.

Most controversial is a proposal to amend the Constitution to deny citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children born in the United States. Such a sweeping step is generally given little chance of passage.

Beilenson also seeks to establish a counterfeit-proof Social Security card to be used to prove work eligibility, and to increase the size and clout of the Border Patrol. Proposals in the past to establish national identification cards have met with intense opposition from civil liberties groups.

Beilenson, whose 24th District extends from Sherman Oaks to Malibu and up to Thousand Oaks, acknowledged that the measures face considerable opposition. But he said that he hoped to at least stimulate national debate about a problem that he warned could eventually undermine public support for legal immigration.

“The federal government has failed miserably in its effort to stop illegal immigration,” Beilenson said Monday in a news release. “The Border Patrol, which is woefully undermanned, estimates that for every one individual apprehended at the border, at least three cross undetected.

“The employer sanctions law is widely misunderstood and inadequately enforced and, worse, has resulted in discrimination against legal residents and citizens who may appear to be foreign to prospective employers,” Beilenson said.

Latino rights groups have charged that Gallegly and Beilenson are playing to a growing backlash among white voters in their respective districts.

“This is not constructive,” said Valerie Small Navarro, national director of the Immigrants’ Rights Program of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“I see a simplistic approach to a problem. If he’s going to address undocumented immigration, he needs to address why people hire undocumented workers. Raise the minimum wage so that it’s livable and enforce labor and safety standards--eliminating the incentive to have workers you can then abuse.”

She said the proposed constitutional amendment is an outrageous attempt “to get people riled up.”

Beilenson, who now represents a more conservative district than he has in the past, said politics played no role in his deliberations on the issue. He said he has supported efforts to curtail illegal immigration throughout the past decade.

“Either we’re serious about our laws or we’re not,” said Beilenson, who calls himself a strong supporter of legal immigration. “I believe these laws should be enforced.”

Beilenson said the constitutional amendment would remove a powerful incentive for women to cross the border to give birth in the United States so that their children will be U.S. citizens. The 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship was written after the Civil War to safeguard the rights of newly freed slaves, not to protect immigrant rights, he said.

Beilenson acknowledged that his proposal to expand the authorized strength of the Border Patrol from 4,000 to 6,600 is only a first step, because funds for the additional positions would still have to be approved. He would also make the Border Patrol independent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to enhance its chance to gain greater resources.

Another bill urges Congress to call attention to the growing burden on state and local governments from illegal immigrants in prisons and jails. He said the federal government has failed to honor its obligation to reimburse states for the costs.

Doris Meissner, a senior associate and immigration and refugee specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said that a national debate is likely over the issue of tamper-proof identification for work eligibility. But she expressed skepticism that Congress would increase funding for the Border Patrol or pass the constitutional amendment.

“Most people are very wary of amending the Constitution,” Meissner said. “I don’t think anybody believes this problem is so serious it can’t be dealt with through legislation.”

Gallegly, whose 23rd District includes Carpinteria and all of Ventura County except most of Thousand Oaks, said Monday that he plans to introduce a revised version of his legislation soon. He applauded Beilenson’s action on the Democratic side of the aisle.

“I hope he will have some luck in communicating to the Administration the significance of this issue, because so far there has not been any indication to my knowledge that it’s an issue the Administration even wants to touch,” Gallegly said.