Excuse me, are you registered to vote?

We’ve all been asked — at the downtown Spokane bus plaza, leaving the grocery store and even on the steps of the EWU PUB. The next time you are asked, be careful of what you scrawl your name on.

Last October, the Spokane City Council voted 5-2 in favor of a new city ordinance that states “no Spokane City officer or employee shall inquire into the immigration status of any person or engage in activities designed to ascertain the immigration status of any person.”

The ordinance is new, but the idea is not. It is Spokane Police Department policy and was for the last decade, according to council president Ben Stuckart.

Stuckart said the council vote simply made it a municipal code. He said the real benefit to the new code is that it increased the knowledge of the local community about policy that was already in place and let immigrants, undocumented or not, know they have a voice in the community.

However, some voices in the community are loud and not always the most informed.

Just over one month ago, an unruly crowd of naysayers at the now-infamous council meeting shouted out their protest in an angry mob-like manner, blaming “illegal aliens” for high taxes, disease, and even invoking the slippery slope of terrorism.

Maybe they forgot that Timothy McVeigh, a U.S.-born, white, Catholic Army veteran killed 168 people in Oklahoma City with a truck bomb, the deadliest terrorist attack in America pre-9/11.

Maybe they forgot about the diseases brought to the New World by white Europeans that decimated the populations of Native tribes in just a few hundred years.

Or maybe they weren’t aware that undocumented immigrants, most of whom are just trying to cash in on the long-heard promise of the American dream, pay taxes at the pump, when they purchase food and through their employers’ tax ID numbers.

Maybe they forgot that these are people: families, worshipers, students and, like it or not, community members.

That is, perhaps, the most important aspect.

As members of the community, it is crucial to be able to report crimes without fear. It is not good practice for anyone in the community to not report crime for fear of being deported. That is why the police had their internal policy, and that is why the ordinance was passed.

Mike Fagan, one of two city council members who initially voted against the ordinance, is among the crowd that fears the tax burden, diseases and the alleged threat of terrorism brought on by so-called illegal aliens.

His main concern does seem to be the taxes; these concerns, however, are based on a report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, stating that the estimated 275,000 undocumented immigrants in Washington cost the state $2.7 billion a year. Fagan said he “issued a challenge for someone to scrutinize the heck out of the report”due to its estimated data, but still believed the numbers are too high even if they were cut in half.

Fagan said in an email interview that he made two motions to repeal the ordinance without the collection of voter signatures, both of which failed.

With the help of organizer Jackie Murray, a member of Respect Washington, an organization well known for its work to toughen immigration laws, the initiative to repeal the ordinance was filed with the city and there is a new petition on the streets — one that compromises what we have built in America and what we are building in Spokane: sanctuary.

We are not alone. Over 100 cities and counties in the U.S. have such laws in place, including Seattle and King County.

Around 14,000 signatures have to be gathered for the initiative to appear on the ballot in November.

So, if you are asked, please do not sign this petition. Initiatives like this one are destroying the American dream.

Some of us still believe in that bronze plaque stamped on the Statue of Liberty. Maybe the problem is that those of us that have never yearned to breathe free take our way of life for granted; it’s not just for “us.” What we have built in America is for everyone. And that includes “them.”

“However you come to our country, you should be welcome,” said Stuckart. “We should be encouraging diversity, not discouraging it.”