I posted previously about how Rhode Island Republican Governor Donald Carcieri had issued an executive order requiring companies that did business with the state to use E-verify to verify the immigration status of employees, and also requiring the state police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Now The Providence Journal reports that Linc Chafee, who was just elected Governor on the Independent line, is planning to follow through on his promise to rescind the executive order, despite the plea from a Rhode Island woman kidnapped and raped by an illegal immigrant:
Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee on Monday stood by his campaign pledge to repeal Governor Carcieri’s executive order on illegal immigration, saying that a letter sent to him from a Rhode Island woman who was kidnapped and raped at knifepoint by an illegal immigrant would not change his mind.
“That could happen in any state. We’re one of only six states, I think, to have E-verify. There are 44 other states that don’t have it and these types of tragedies can happen in any one of those 44 states,” he said at a news conference for a separate issue. “I don’t necessarily make the linkage.” ….
Last week, a woman identified only as Heather sent a letter to Chafee’s transition team asking that he reconsider his stance, arguing that had a system such as E-verify been in place, she might not had been sexually assaulted in June 2008.
The woman had been kidnapped from a Warwick supermarket and raped in Roger Williams Park in Providence by Marco Riz, a 27-year-old in this country illegally. Her case renewed calls for tightening the state’s policies on illegal immigrants. (Riz, who pleaded no contest to kidnapping and raping the woman, was sentenced to 30 years in prison last year.)
“I campaigned on it,” says Chafee, who was out of the country last week when the letter was delivered to his offices. “I can’t go back on a campaign pledge.”
It is not clear if this action also will apply to that part of the executive order requiring the state police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
A link to the woman’s letter was posted by ProJo, and is embedded below:
Letter to Linc Chafee From Heather Re Illegal Immigration http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf
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Related Posts:
Hey, Rhode Island Already Checks Immigration Status At Traffic Stops
Rhode Island Illegal Immigration Control Order of 2008
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