Capitol Letters: I don’t know it all — and you don’t want me to

State Rep. Megan Jones

At the Storm Lake forum last Saturday, House File 572 was brought up multiple times.

I had heard very little about this bill prior to the forum. There are thousands of bills floating around the Capitol right now — House files, Senate Files, House Resolutions, Senate Resolutions, Joint Resolutions, bill drafts... and the ideas. So many ideas.

It's impossible to keep up with all of them, because ultimately, most will not become law, and the legislative process filters them by design.

We work together to sift through legislation, make amendments and table bills that cannot be fixed.

Part of that filter­­ is taking feedback on legislation as those bills surface throughout the process.

And on Saturday, I heard from my constituents LOUD AND CLEAR: HF 572 has problems. I texted the Majority Leader from the parking lot of the forum and told him this bill needed changes because my constituents were very upset.

As it turns out, we were not the only ones with concerns.

The original bill was trying to tackle human smuggling — and that’s where this issue gets very tricky. Voting “no” could indicate you don’t support efforts to quelch human trafficking. At the same time, the original bill draft created some pretty ugly scenarios which targeted persons of color, persons based on citizenship and potentially criminalized innocent persons.

It was time to get to work on this bill.

I appreciate the efforts of my constituents, advocates, the bill drafters and my colleagues to put this bill into a better position to protect ALL people from human smuggling and the criminalization of victimization.

This bill ended up on the debate calendar on March 21. I am so glad my constituents were proactive and brought this up at the forum and gave me a good running start on my research and advocacy. This bill changed dramatically in the last six days.

We were able to get an amendment to the bill to make an important change. While the original language made it a crime to smuggle a “noncitizen individual,” this was amended to replace noncitizen individual with a person “in the country in violation of federal immigration law.”

This focuses the bill.

Human smuggling is an important issue and one that we need to be addressing in our state. But we do not want to be looping in people who are just inadvertently shuttling people to church, counseling or other services out of the goodness of their hearts. People shouldn’t be targeted because of the color of their skin.

This bill, as amended, focuses on human trafficking. Individuals and organizations can continue to provide food or assistance to anyone who is just trying to care for themselves and their families without fear of criminal recourse.

The bill passed 75-14.

I so very much appreciate the people who came out to the forum to educate me on this bill. I cannot possibly know everything about every bill. A representative who knows everything is not representing. A big part of my job is listening and learning.

There is a lot more to a bill than words on a page — and we learned that, more than ever, with this bill.

The last Storm Lake Legislative Forum of the 2025 session is Saturday, April 12, at 10 a.m. at King’s Pointe Resort. Contact Megan Jones by email: megan.jones@legis.iowa.gov