Court Overrules Oregon County’s Anti-Immigrant Law

St. Helens is featured in this week's issue of Time magazine. It says in 2008, state legislatures passed more than 200 immigration-related laws, mostly to prompt undocumented workers to give up and move back to their home countries.

Woman at an Immigration Rights Rally in Salem Salem-News.com photo by Tim King

(ST. HELENS, Ore.) - A controversial ballot measure that passed in Columbia County last fall won't become law after all.

This week, Circuit Court Judge Ted Grove ruled the plan to slap employers with mandatory $10,000 fines for hiring undocumented workers oversteps the county's authority because immigration enforcement is a federal issue.

Marcy Westerling, director of the Rural Organizing Project, a group that fought the anti-immigrant Measure 5-190, says now it's up to the feds to revise the laws.

"Our challenge is to show how united we are in wanting Congress to do its job in passing safe and sane immigration reform that works, for all of this country."

While the racial tension is not dead in St. Helens, Westerling believes the ballot measure appears to be.

"The only people that can appeal this are the county, and the county is not wanting to see a ridiculous law go into effect. So, the county will not be appealing this."

St. Helens is featured in this week's issue of Time magazine. It says in 2008, state legislatures passed more than 200 immigration-related laws, mostly to prompt undocumented workers to give up and move back to their home countries by making it more difficult to work in the U.S.

Backers of those measures don't believe the federal government is doing a good enough job at immigration enforcement.

Others say it's not stricter enforcement that's needed, but laws that allow some workers to remain in the country legally.