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The immigration issues roiling Arizona came to Cleveland on Friday, stoking passionate discussion, and probably not for the last time.

A forum at the City Club of Cleveland introduced State Rep. Courtney Combs, a downstate Republican who is calling for an Arizona-like crackdown on illegal immigrants in Ohio.

Combs declared illegal immigration a national menace and said states must step in where federal authorities are slow to tread.

His campaign — yet to reach Northeast Ohio — might be gaining steam around the state. A poll last month found strong support among Ohioans for an anti-illegal immigrant law.

“I wish the states didn’t have to do this, that the federal government would do its job,” Combs said.

But with migrants streaming across the Mexican border, many of them drug smugglers and human traffickers, Combs said, states need to join the fight.

That viewpoint alarmed and bewildered his co-panelists: local immigration lawyers Margaret Wong and Richard Herman and the Rev. Stanley Miller, the executive director of the Cleveland NAACP.

Ohio is far from the Mexican border, and no one seems worried about illegal immigrants from Canada, Wong said.

“What does a border state and their drugs and their ranches have to do with the Midwest?” she asked.

Northeast Ohio desperately needs immigrants, Wong added, and Combs seems intent on scaring them away.

“We do need immigrants. I have no problem with that at all,” Combs said. “I do have a problem with who is coming, and why.”

The debate, while touching on disparate American experiences, also illustrated two Ohios.

Immigrants make up 14 percent of the population in Arizona, a border state that may be home to more than half a million illegal immigrants. In contrast, only 3 percent of Ohioans are foreign-born, and experts estimate less than 1 percent of the state’s 11 million people are here illegally.

In Northeast Ohio, an illegal immigrant is as likely to be an international student who overstayed her visa as a farmworker from Mexico.

Combs, who lives in Butler County, a growing bedroom suburb of Cincinnati, sees a different, more Arizona-like Ohio.

A pre-recession housing boom drew hundreds of Mexican laborers to the overwhelmingly white county and to its major city, Hamilton. The newcomers found work in a non-union housing industry. They infuriated established residents as they competed for jobs, raised rents and taxed social services and safety forces.

At the City Club, Combs accused illegal immigrants of being involved in drug dealing and home invasions in Hamilton.

He and Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones have emerged as two of Ohio’s harshest critics of illegal immigration. The pair traveled to the Mexican border in May on a fact-finding mission. They are pushing for a state referendum to impose an Arizona-like immigration law and hope to get it on the ballot next year.

“I’ve walked the border. I’ve talked to the ranchers. I’ve seen the problems,” Combs told the City Club.

Arizona’s impending law requires local police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if they suspect that person is in the country illegally.

Traditionally, immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, and the U.S. Justice Department is challenging the Arizona law as unconstitutional, seeking to block it before it takes effect July 29. But it’s an idea gaining traction.

Twenty states are pursuing similar laws, Combs said, and Ohio is listening.

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Article courtesy cleveland.com