Rep. Daryl Metcalf held hearings over the past two days on what he styled as the "National Security Begins at Home" package of legislation. The hearings included the following bills:

HB 41, HB 355, HB 439, HB 474, HB 738, HB 798, HB 799, HB 801, HB 809, HB 810, HB 856, HB 857, HB 858, HB 865, SB 9

Without getting into each and every one of these bills, let me highlight some things these bills would do:

• Require the flawed e-verify system to be used by all employers in the state
• Penalize municipalities that are considered "sanctuary cities" (Reading and Philadelphia both fall into this definition). Penalties could include taking away public benefits from all residents in these cities.
• Make it a crime to knowingly transport an undocumented immigrant. This would include a church driving an individual to services or a child driving her undocumented mother to the hospital
• Require identification to be used to access any and all public benefits, despite the fact that an estimated 500,000 citizens in Pennsylvania lack ID (you guessed it: this group includes a disproportionate number of poor, black, and elderly)
• Allow competitor companies and disgruntled employees to bring lawsuits! against a business for allegedly hiring undocumented immigrants. Seemingly no proof is necessary and one can win triple! damages (triple what, I'm not sure, but it sounds big!)
• Allow police officers to request immigration paperwork of any immigrant and would create a criminal offense for note carrying those papers. How this law will be enforced without racial profiling, I don't know.
• Deputize local police as ICE agents, able to carry out immigration functions.
• Deny citizenship to children born in Pennsylvania to undocumented immigrants.
• and many more fun provisions....

Each year in the U.S., 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with limited options for higher education or employment. Many undocumented youth were brought to this country as children, even infants, by their parents. They are indistinguishable in every way but one from their citizen friends, classmates, and siblings: they don’t have a piece of paper that says they can stay here.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would change that. The Act would provide conditional legal status to applicants who:

Julio Maldonado was deported to Peru on Thursday, October 22, 2009, after arriving in the U.S. 38 years ago at the age of 3.

He and his cousin, Denis Calderon, had been victims of an attack based on their ethnicity in 1996. Julio was wrongfully convicted of aggravated assault, incarcerated for a total of 8 years, and then deported.

I've lived in Philly just over a year now, and for most of that time I've worked as a staff attorney for a local nonprofit helping immigrants and refugees stay in this country with their families. I have worked in the field for about three years and I've seen a lot of messed up things in that short time. Doing this work is a good way to develop a thick skin. But almost three months ago, I learned about a local case that made my jaw drop.

Julio Maldonado and his cousin Denis Calderon were victims of a racial attack in Northeast Philly in 1996. Julio had come to the U.S. at the age of three from Peru and had been a lawful permanent resident since age seven. He lived in New York and was visiting Denis's home in Philly. Denis's family was the first Latin@ family in the neighborhood.