House and Senate leadership unveiled details on a proposal punishing people for entering and remaining in the state without legal permission Thursday, and they want to create a new crime to try and combat illegal immigration.
The new crime is called “impermissible occupation.”
For a first offense, the charge is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, a $500 fine. For a second offense, it's a felony charge, up to 2 years in prison and a $1,000 fine. Upon serving their sentence, a person would then have 72 hours to leave the state.
House Speaker Charles McCall is leading the effort alongside his counterpart in the Senate, Pro Tem Greg Treat.
McCall says the bill uses language upheld by federal courts. He added, it will also prevent local officials from taking their own initiative to protect immigrant communities.
“Cities will not be able to make their own individual designation of whether or not they want sanctuary city status or not,” McCall said. “This bill will preempt that and will not allow that in the state of Oklahoma.”
Leadership in both the House and Senate say they’ve drafted the measure with advice and input from the state’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who’s publicly stated his support for some kind of state-level immigration enforcement.
The goal, Treat said in a press release, is to deter people from coming to Oklahoma and encourage those who want to stay in the state to seek the “clear pathway to citizenship.”
A template for other states, exceptions for some
McCall said House Bill 4156 is a “constitutional approach” for heartland states looking to address the Biden administration’s failures to secure the southern border. “We’ll be able to combat this issue more effectively if the states in the region all work, you know, towards a solution in this path,” McCall said.
The move puts Oklahoma in line with other Republican-controlled legislatures that have proposed similar legislation, such as Texas, Florida, Iowa and Arizona.
The difference with this measure, McCall said, is that he believes it will stand up in court.
Only people in two legal categories are exempt from criminality:
- People who are granted lawful presence in the country by the federal government. This includes but is not limited to being granted asylum.
- People who are approved for protection under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
Gabriela Ramirez-Perez is the immigration policy analyst at the center-left think tank Oklahoma Policy Institute. She responded to an inquiry about the bill with a written statement hours after the measure was officially filed in the House.“Anti-immigrant bills like HB 4156 breed fear and mistrust within our communities,” Ramirez-Perez wrote. “They pit neighbor against neighbor, simply because national pundits think immigration should be a hot-button election issue.”
She said the bill would separate hardworking Oklahoma families and perpetuate a cycle of fear that undermines the nation’s history of “welcoming immigrants to make new lives and become part of the great American mosaic.”
Ramirez-Perez said her organization supports the work of U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R–OK, who worked across party lines to craft bipartisan immigration legislation at the federal level.
When asked during the press conference, McCall admitted to not having read the entirety of Lankford’s bipartisan proposal to Congress. He said he’s more focused on what federal courts are doing, as they will help decide the limitations states face when enacting laws protecting their borders.
“I’m not a U.S. Congressman,” McCall said. “They need to do their job and figure it out. I haven’t crafted a policy for the federal government. What we have to pay attention to is the courts. We have to pay attention to how the courts are regulating the states’ efforts to deal with this issue in the absence of the federal government stepping up.”
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