PHOENIX — Republican lawmakers want to widen Arizona’s illegal-immigration crackdown with a proposal to require hospitals to check on whether patients are in the country legally, causing outrage among medical professionals who fear becoming de facto immigration agents under the law.

The medical industry ripped the bill Monday as it was scheduled for a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Doctors envisioned scenarios in which immigrants with contagious diseases such as tuberculosis would stay home from the clinic or hospital and put themselves and the public at a grave health risk.

“This is making us into a police state that will try to catch people when they are sick,” said George Pauk, a retired doctor with an organization called Physicians for a National Health Program. “Do we want to stop sick people from coming in for health care?”

Arizona is the first Legislature to take up such a measure amid a national push in conservative states to crack down on illegal immigration, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Arizona lawmakers ignited the debate a year ago when they passed a bill that required local police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally. A judge later put that provision on hold.

The introduction of the bill comes just days after an illegal immigrant in Texas with a banana-size tumor in her spine said she was ousted from her hospital because of her immigration status. She later found another hospital to get treatment.

Supporters say the hospital bill is a necessary tool to fight illegal immigration at a time when hospitals lose tens of millions of dollars treating illegal immigrants in emergency rooms.

Senate President Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican who was chief sponsor of last year’s immigration law, says the bill is part of a broader effort to crack down on illegal immigration. The hospitals bill wouldn’t bar people from getting care, but it would put the onus on hospitals to “do due diligence,” Pearce said.

“We’re going to enforce our laws without apology,” he said.

 

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