January 11, 2008 

(INDIANAPOLIS) - Bedford State Senator Brent Steele has introduced and helped write a bill to make Indiana crack down on illegal immigrants and illegal immigration in general.

Senate Bill 335 will take a number of stringent measures, including requiring the state police superintendent to negotiate an arrangement with the federal government to allow troopers to assist in enforcing immigration law, prohibiting a person from knowingly employing an illegal immigrant, prohibiting any government entity from entering into a contract with a company that employs illegal immigrants, and other measures.

Steele says the bill is modeled after laws in more southern states such as Arizona and Oklahoma. What affect this could have on Indiana is unknown; however, some areas that have taken similar measures have seen mixed results.

The town of Riverside, New Jersey, for example, made it illegal for a person to employ or rent housing to an illegal immigrant in 2006, and it worked, but now Riverside’s economy is in shambles as businesses that catered to the immigrants have mostly gone under, and the downtown area has more boarded windows than open shops.