As the clock ticked past 10 p.m. on the final night of the legislature’s annual session this June, Woonsocket Rep. Jon Brien stood on the floor of the humid House chamber, exasperated.

His controversial “E-Verify” bill, requiring private employers to check the immigration status of new hires, had been approved by House members weeks before. But it still hadn’t made it to the Senate floor.

Time was running out, Brien said.

He was right. When the session ended a day later, E-Verify was left on the cutting-room floor.

The finger-pointing went into high gear as bill sponsors and Governor Carcieri blasted the Senate leadership for thwarting the plan they said would crack down on illegal immigration and return jobs to U.S. citizens. Senate leaders and other critics meanwhile called the legislation unconstitutional and discriminatory.

What started as one of dozens of bills addressing illegal immigration, by summer had emerged as a prominent symbol of the immigration debate, along with Governor Carcieri’s executive order last spring requiring, in part, that state agencies and vendors start using the E-Verify system. The July raid on six state court houses and the arrests of 31 maintenance workers further fanned the flames.

Now as the General Assembly gears up to begin its next legislative session next week, the political chatter has begun anew. Is there a future for E-Verify?

Brien, a Democrat, says he’s already drafted a new version of the bill and plans to submit it in the opening days of the session.

He’ll have the backing of House Speaker William J. Murphy and his chamber, which has passed the legislation two years running, only to see it stalled in the Senate. “I know I am in support of Jon Brien’s bill; I know that bill will definitely be on the House floor again this session and I know undoubtedly that bill will pass again,” the speaker said recently.

But for the third year running, the question now becomes will it pass the Senate? Sen. M. Teresa Paiva Weed, accused by many of killing the proposal in June, has now been elevated to the presumed Senate presidency. Her deputy to-be, Senate Majority Leader Daniel P. Connors has also expressed concerns about E-Verify. It was Connors who chaired the Labor Committee that ultimately let E-Verify die.

It’s a sign Brien says that doesn’t bode well for E-Verify.

Connors maintains that he still has concerns about the bill’s legal merits –– a federal court ruling in Oklahoma, for example, found that state governments don’t have free rein to enact their own immigration policies.

Still, Brien says he will fight for his bill.

But he insists he intends to steer clear of the “hot button points” that the topic of immigration stirs up in this state. “If people want to make this a bigger argument, we’re not going to be a part of that,” he said.

— Journal Staff Writer Cynthia Needham

cneedham@projo.com