Print edition: 
Good for Gov. Sam Brownback, House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, and Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, for signaling last week that they are in no hurry to see Kansas pass an Arizona- or Alabama-style crackdown on illegal immigration.
“I’ve made it pretty clear that my preference this year, like the governor, would be that we not address immigration. But if we do I want it to be something that gets a lot of buy-in,” O’Neal said Friday. “My focus is to get people to reach some kind of consensus.”
As for whether Kansas needs to penalize those who harbor illegal immigrants or to compel local police to detain people who can’t prove their legal status, Morris said, “I don’t believe that gets any traction in the Senate.”
The unwillingness to do as Arizona and Alabama have done may frustrate Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who wrote the laws in those states and remains one of the nation’s busiest and most strident critics of illegal immigration. Kobach argued in House hearings last week that “Unless Kansas acts, we will become the No. 1 destination for illegal aliens in the Midwest.”
But the legal challenges and costly problems that Kobach’s handiwork has created in those states are reason enough for why Kansas shouldn’t follow their lead. Lawmakers heard last week about crops rotting in fields in Alabama and Georgia after residents both legal and illegal fled the states; about a German Mercedes-Benz executive having been detained in Alabama after a traffic stop until his passport could be retrieved; about churches and charities fearing their ministries would be harmed by an anti-harboring law; and of state Rep. Ponka-We Victors, D-Wichita, who is of American Indian and Latino heritage, having been hassled and detained by border control agents while visiting family in Arizona.
A measure to require employers to use the online E-Verify system to check job applicants’ immigration status seems like common sense. But a state that wants to show it’s open for business shouldn’t rush to mandate something that business groups argue would create legal and regulatory problems.
Bills on the opposite end of the issue also seem unlikely to pass, including one sought by a coalition of business groups that would help qualifying illegal immigrants work legally in industries with labor shortages.
“There has to be another, better way,” Victors told her fellow lawmakers, in arguing against the enforcement bills.
With the 2012 Legislature halfway through its allotted days and nowhere near the end of its overflowing agenda, the federal issue of illegal immigration should not be a priority for state lawmakers.
For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman
