Immigrant advocates are pushing for the policy on immigration not to ask about the immigration status of individuals in the city of Yakima to be made a legally binding ordinance. According to the Yakima Herald-Republic, advocates fear that the current policy could be changed in the future unless it is made legally binding.
The City Council has begun leaning toward accepting the argument and passed a measure to start drawing up a draft ordinance to do this last week. The decision follows several weeks of debate on whether Yakima should be officially designated as a ‘welcoming city’.
That was a less stringent variant of a previous proposal to have Yakima declared a ‘Sanctuary city’. It stated that employees of the city do not discriminate on factors such as gender, Immigrant status, and race, but it failed to pass, with 4-3 votes. Council members, Dulce Gutierrez, Avina Gutierrez, and Carmen Mendez, all voted yes. But, at later council meetings, advocates continued to press the issue. Last week, they presented a citizen’s petition with over 3200 signatures calling for such a resolution.
Although the petition was accepted, fear remains among the immigrant community that police will ask for the immigration status of people who report crimes and then pass that information to federal immigration authorities. Police claim they do not ask for such information because crimes would then not be reported and it would be harder to gain eyewitness accounts and other details to solve them.