OFIR launches STOP Oregon Sanctuaries ballot measure drive

Alert date: 
Monday, May 1, 2017
Alert body: 

Oregonians for Immigration Reform announces the launching of a new initiative: Initiative Petition 22 -- "Stop Oregon Sanctuaries" - to be placed on the November 2018 statewide ballot.  OFIR is now collecting sponsorship signatures.

"Since 1987, Oregon Revised Statute 181A.820 has prevented Oregon's state and local law-enforcement agencies from offering their fullest cooperation to the U.S. authorities who seek to identify and detain illegal aliens," said OFIR president Cynthia Kendoll.  She stated further:

"The law has effectively rendered ours a 'sanctuary state' for those in the country illegally.  ORS 181A.820 undermines the rule of law generally and federal immigration law specifically, thwarts the enforcement efforts of the brave men and women who serve on our national-security front lines, and endangers innocent Americans and legal residents."

As an example of the latter, Kendoll noted last summer's murder of three people in Woodburn.  Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez, an illegal alien who had been deported six times, is charged with this crime, is incarcerated and awaiting trial.  "If not for ORS 181A.820," Kendoll said, "Oseguera-Gonzalez might have been identified previously as an illegal alien by state or local police and deported by ICE."

OFIR vice president Richard LaMountain points out: "Illegal aliens can and do harm the very people to whom Oregon and its counties and cities owe their foremost responsibility: American citizens.  For this reason, enforcement of U.S. immigration law is not extrinsic, but central, to the duties of state and local law enforcement."

Besides the deaths and injuries to innocent citizens in Oregon caused by illegal aliens, there are significant fiscal costs to taxpayers for services to illegal aliens.

The current threshold for initiatives to be placed on the 2018 ballot is 88,184 signatures of registered Oregon voters, collected by July 2018.

Founded in 2000, Oregonians for Immigration Reform advocates ending illegal immigration and reducing the excessive levels of legal immigration.  In 2014, OFIR spearheaded the successful Ballot Measure 88 referendum by which Oregon voters rejected Senate Bill 833 that would have granted legal driving privileges to illegal aliens.

For further information about OFIR's goals and activities, see the website at: OregonIR.org.

Oregon's sanctuary law when passed in 1987 was cited as ORS 181.850.  It has subsequently been amended and is now cited as ORS 181A.820.