Action on Bill

REFORM of the country’s badly flawed immigration laws is something that politicians from President Bush on down feel is necessary. But one California legislator, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California, is intent on pushing through a bill that, if enacted, will surely make a bad situation worse.

Rohrabacher has authored HR 3722, the Undocumented Alien Emergency Medical Assistance Amendments of 2004. The bill would require hospital personnel to report undocumented aliens seeking emergency treatment to U.S. immigration authorities. 

According to an alert put out by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “Hospitals would not receive critical federal reimbursement for the emergency care of undocumented immigrants unless they question their emergency patients to determine their citizenship, immigration, and financial status, and obtain employer information and biometric data for transmission to the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of immediately deporting those determined to be undocumented. 

“Furthermore, the bill states that hospitals could deny emergency health services to immigrants thought to be undocumented under various situations, including active labor (if there is significant likelihood that the deportation of the mother during active labor would not cause material deterioration of the child).” 

The undocumented immigrant situation in the U.S. is obviously crying out for a solution, but this ugly piece of legislation surely isn’t the answer. You can rally against it by alerting your federal representative. For more, go to the news section at AILA’s website, www.aila.org .