Legal News

Gillibrand Already Taking Heat for Immigration Views

By Nathan Koppel

Associated Press

Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand thanks supporters in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006 after beating incumbent U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y.. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)

Kirsten Gillibrand, the newest member of the nation’s most exclusive club, is already stirring debate in the immigration community.

As a Congresswoman from upstate New York, she co-sponsored the Save Act, a 2007 bill that aimed to crack down on illegal immigration partly by using military personnel and defense equipment to police the borders. Last year, she voted in favor of a measure to penalize “sanctuary cities,” so-called because they are considered lax in enforcing immigration laws.

Neither of the laws passed, but Gillibrand’s support of these and other immigration measures has raised concerns among some immigration afficionados.

Sam Udani, publisher of the Immigration Daily newspaper, calls the Save Act “the kind of stuff you’d expect to come from a real Southern, anti-immigration, right-wing perspective.”

Deborah Notkin, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, notes that New York City is considered to be a sanctuary city. Gillibrand “is unlikely to be reelected in New York with a program that wants to penalize sanctuary cities,” Notkin says.

Gillibrand’s office did not return a call for comment.

But Ted Ruthizer, head of the immigration practice at Kramer Levin, is more hopeful. He says he has spoken to the Senator several times. She is agreeable, he says, to finding ways that immigrants who have lived in the U.S. a long time can “regularize their immigration status.”

Plus, he says, she seems to be a savvy politician, who will likely move more to the middle on immigration now that she represents a broader constituency. “Gillibrand comes first from an [immigration] enforcement view, but she has indicated a willingness to look at the whole picture,” Ruthizer says.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 23, 2009 (boomark / email).