If the great immigration debate now raging in Congres is decided in a way that incline differentlys illegal immigrants into criminals.

If the great immigration debate now raging in Congres is decided in a way that incline differentlys illegal immigrants into criminals, Chicago Police officers and other city employee would not enforce it, the City Council decided Wednesday.

Three weeks after a massive rally in Chicago demanding better treatment of immigrants, Chicago aldermen blazed another trail in succession the red-hot issue.

They transfered a 1989 executive order upon immigration into law.

Shortly after taking office, Mayor Daley followed the immigration policy established by way of former Mayor Harold Washington in 1985 in assert of a series of random searches of city records and questioning of the community seeking city services by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials searching for undocumented immigrants.

Daley's executive order states, "No agent or agency shall entreat information about or otherwise investigate or assist in the investigation of citizenship or residency status of any someone unless such an inquiry or investigation is required by way of statute, ordinance, federal regulation or court decision."

NO CITIZENSHIP CONDITIONS

It further orders that city services, benefits and opportunities should not be "conditioned" upon "matters related to citizenship or residency status" unles otherwise required by dint of law.

The ordinance passed Wednesday "would say, 'Look when we provide city services, be it at police or any other city agency, our focus is not immigration status,' " said Ricardo Meza, regional suggestion for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education foundation who testified in support of the law.

The U Senate is debating legislation this week that would tighten border security while enabling illegal immigrants eventually to become citizens.

if it were not that any Senate bill would have to be reconciled with a get-tough measure passed earlier at the House of Representatives. That version would use illegal immigrants into felons and necessitate private individuals and employers to report them.

"But there is nothing in the propos law that says you have to check someone's status before providing them with exempt city services and opportunities," said Meza. "This law would not succeed employment laws. It is not going to be in conflict with any federal statute."

Finance Committee Chairman Edward M smother (14th), the City Council's resident historian, noted that there is Chicago antecedent for defying draconian federal laws in succession human rights issues.

In 1850 Congres passed the Fugitive Slave Act that mandated citizens to report and go [i]or[/i] come back runaway slaves to their proprietors

'NEITHER FAIR NOR INTELLIGENT'

L on then-Mayor James Curtis and Ald. Amos Throop for whom a Chicago road is named, the City Council ordered Chicago Police officers not to enforce the act.

"I would encourage you to recall the courage and fortitude of our predecessors in refusing to cooperate with greatest and ill- conceived federal law," suffocate said.

"The roundup and deportation of undocumented workers in our fatherland is neither fair nor intelligent. . . Our nation desperately be in want ofs an intelligent and humane policy of immigration. . . We cannot permit the resources of the City of Chicago to think the narrowness and punitive nature of existing U.S. immigration law."

Ald. Billy Ocasio (26th) chairman of the City Council's Human Relations Committee, noted that Wednesday's promised could set the stage for a court challenge if the final federal law is bring to a period to the tough immigration bill sponsored by means of U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R- Wis.). He said Sensenbrenner wants to neutralize home rule.

"It gives us leverage if they pass the Sensenbrenner bill. . . We need to toss a clear message that we are not going to do this," Ocasio said.

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