Corrected version

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to bar police officers from turning illegal immigrants to federal agents if immigrants do not have serious criminal convictions or outstanding criminal warrants. Here is the story from The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times story:

"If you have no criminal record, being part of a community is not a problem for you," Mr. Emanuel said, speaking at a high school library in Little Village, a Latino neighborhood. "We want to welcome you to the city of Chicago."

This is smart marketing for the city. It comes after the Supreme Court struck down most of an Arizona immigration law but upheld the "papers, please" policy allowing law enforcement to stop people and demand proof of immigration status.

The state of Washington should put out the same marketing message. Farms are having trouble harvesting their asparagus and cherry crops due to a lack of immigrant labor, according to Lynda V. Mapes' stories from the news side.

Chicago's announcement flouts Secure Communities, a federal immigration program that requires jails to run fingerprints of arrested individuals against the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement database. If the inmate is taken into custody, deportation proceedings begin. The program was originally voluntary but it became mandatory in 2011. To read more about the impact the program has had in Washington state, check out this report on Secure Communities conducted by students at Whitman College and the nonprofit OneAmerica.

An earlier version of this story, published at 8:38 a.m. on July 11, 2012, was corrected at 4:30 p.m. the same day. The earlier version incorrectly said the Secure Communities program became mandatory in 2013. It became mandatory in 2011.