"A bill to ensure that immigrants in Virginia can report crimes without fearing that police will check their immigration status won narrow approval Friday in a House of Delegates committee.

The House Courts of Justice Committee voted 11-10 to advance Sen. Janet D. Howell’s measure, which immigrant rights advocates called the most important remaining bill that is protective of undocumented immigrants in a General Assembly session generally hostile to immigrants who lack legal status.

“We don’t want them to be targets of vicious criminals just because they are vulnerable,” said House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, who supported the measure, Senate Bill 441.

Howell, D-Reston, said her bill “is an effort to help law enforcement with their duties. We have had compelling testimony that in the immigrant populations they won’t come forward to report crimes for fear of losing their immigration status.”

“This is just an effort to give them the security of knowing they can report crimes,” Howell said. “Victims will be protected and so will witnesses.”

Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, argued against the measure, saying it would create the only instance in state criminal law in which someone “investigating Crime A can’t ask about Crime B.”

“I think this is bad policy,” Bell said. “Why are we precluding absolutely the investigation of a second crime in favor of this other crime?”

Republicans began the 2008 legislative session with a lengthy agenda of bills designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Virginia. Most of those bills have been defeated, including proposals to allow police the option of arresting and fingerprinting anyone charged with a Class 1 or Class 2 misdemeanor.

Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a lobbyist for a coalition of Latino organizations, called Howell’s bill “a very important public safety bill. Most of the immigrants in Virginia who are here without documentation are civil violators of immigration law, and so these are not criminals but they are afraid to come forward and cooperate in the prosecution of crimes.”

Gastanaga, a former Virginia chief deputy attorney general, said they are afraid to talk to police sometimes out of fear of their status being determined and federal immigration authorities being called.

“This sets a statewide policy that is very simple and easy to understand, which is, as a general rule, police are not going to ask your status if you come forward to report a crime and a victim or a witness,” she said.

“There are exceptions built in that create a proper balance so law enforcement’s hands are not tied, which is why the state police are comfortable with the bill, which is why the commonwealth’s attorneys did not oppose the bill, which is why the sheriffs did not oppose the bill,” Gastanaga said.

The measure passed the Senate earlier this month by a 39-0 vote and now heads to the floor of the House of Delegates next week." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, March 1, 2008)