Yesterday the California State Assembly jumped into the immigration debate hubbub by passing, on a party line vote, a non-binding resolution calling for immigration reform. As the new Arizona immigration law continues to garner resistance, court challenges, and boycott calls, the Assembly Joint Resolution, aka AJR 37, “urges congress and the president to take a comprehensive and workable approach to improving the nation's immigration system.”

While the action by the state assembly is essentially only symbolic, it is another move which brings the lack of federal legislation and the Arizona law into focus in California. The list of negative reactions to the Arizona law continues to build, with moves in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to implement restrictions on doing business with Arizona.

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, in his official blog, described the Arizona law as “the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law. The tragedy of the law is its totally flawed reasoning: that immigrants come to our country to rob, plunder, and consume public resources. That is not only false, the premise is nonsense.”

In the official summary of California’s AJR 37, the author, Kevin de León, Assemblyman for the 45th district, describes the reason for the bill as follows: “AJR 37 would urge the President of the United States and Congress to take a comprehensive and workable approach to solving our nation's broken immigration system by creating a path to citizenship for the millions of immigrants working and living in the United States.

It is estimated that there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, with 2.7 million of those undocumented immigrants residing in California. California has one of the largest populations of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, that make up one-fourth of the nation's overall undocumented population. Additionally, one in every eleven worker is an undocumented immigrant that contributes to the state's economy. According to a report by the University of Southern California, if undocumented Latino workers were granted legal status, the state government would benefit from a gross increase of $310 million in income taxes and the federal government would gain $1.4 billion in paid income taxes. This, however, is not to say that these individuals don't already pay taxes. It is estimated that $280 million in state and $1.4 billion in federal income taxes are already being paid each year by California's undocumented Latinos.

In 2009, President Obama voiced his commitment to pursue comprehensive immigration reform and take action on the matter in 2010. Unfortunately, partisan gridlock in Washington is threatening to stall major reforms including overhauling our current antiquated and dysfunctional immigration system. Congress needs to create a sensible path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants and create flexible legal limits on future immigration that will uphold our nation's basic values of fairness, equal opportunity, and respect for the law. Comprehensive immigration reform would help lay the foundation for robust, just and widespread economic growth.”

But, our West Orange county Assemblyman Jim Silva doesn’t buy it.

“Granting amnesty to persons in this country illegally is wrong,” said Silva. “All we are doing is encouraging even more people to enter the United States illegally. California does not have the financial resources available to keep its borders open.”

“The federal government’s inability to secure our country’s borders is forcing states to take matters into their own hands,” stated Silva. “Illegal immigration costs the state of California over $10 billion annually. This is money that could be going toward public safety, education, health and transportation programs vital to the state of California. For people who wonder why the state budget is constantly in crisis mode, they don’t have to look any further than AJR 37,” continued Silva. “Instead of asking members of Congress to focus on securing our borders, our state government urges them to reward and encourage illegal behavior that costs California billions of dollars each year.”

Assemblyman Jim Silva represents the 67th Assembly District, which includes the communities of Anaheim, Cypress, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor, Seal Beach, Stanton, Sunset Beach and Westminster.