Ariona Law

I don't know. I feel it essentially legalizes racial profiling but at the same time Arizona is facing severe issues with illegal immigration and gangs/violence from Mexico in particular. Seems there's no best solution for all in this case - either the populace gets terrorized with the violence and kidnappings in Arizona or someone's rights get trampled to deal with the problem. If there's a better solution I hope someone spells it out quickly.

I just read "The Reaper's Line: life and death on the Mexican border." The author, Lee Morgan, is a retired U.S. Customs (later ICE) agent who still lives in Douglas, Arizona (a small border town SE of Tucson). It's fascinating. Gives more perspective on the whole situation... reads like an action movie plus lots of interesting political points.

Had legal hispanics been more proactive turning in illegals, had the federal government been more responsive to the states' cries for a closed border--like almost every other country in the world, had there not been terrorist attacks on our soil, then this might never have been and issue. I am all for making it easier to immigrate legally, but I can't abide the idea that anyone thinks they can just walk on over here and get a free education, social security, medicaid or any other benefit just because they were able to sneak across our borders.

As to profiling, it only makes sense to spend your efforts with those people who have been shown to flaunt our laws, whether it is Arab Muslims likely to blow things up or hispanics sneaking into the US. Could just as easily have been Irish immigrants a few years back, couldn't it? Let's get back to common sense and give this "politically correct" thinking a rest, OK? There are people out there who want to take advantage of us and it is the government's job to protect us from them.

I totally agree with antiqueone!!

Jumbie -STX

I almost agree completely. I don't think a legal person of any particular characteristic has any obligation to find and identify illegal people of the same characteristic. That's a bit silly and the role of government law enforcement agencies, not the citizens.

I totally agree with antiqueone!!

Jumbie -STX

I believe in reciprocity. The path for Mexican nationals to become legal residents of the US should be no easier that it is for US nationals to become legal residents of Mexico.

It is hypocrisy for the President of Mexico to condemn our immigration laws when Mexico has some of the harshest in all of the Americas.

YES THIS DOES EFFECT YOU! BIGGGGG TIME.

Ask your self where is the end to this problem? Just say that everyone from ALL countries came in under the dark of night? How can this country afford this? I guess the last person paying taxes would need to pay 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I just don't know how to deal with this problem. And Washington has not done anything. If you are found to be in England illiegal you are sent back. If you are in Iran you are put in prison. Some places you are just shot.

What is the answer?

I guess that is the only answer, let this country fail and become a third wold place then no one will want to come here!

I just don't know.

billd

Is there anything that has a more "Alice in Wonderland" quality than a CNN crawl that says "law makes illegals unlawful"? In the good old days powerful countries plundered and looted weak ones. Now inept governments encourage the poor to invade there neighbors vote themselves money from the host and sent what they can to support the folks back home. Some of the people in the host country that have to show identification for any number of reasons say asking illegals for ID is profiling. I hope this is one of the flashbacks they promised us and not reality.

As someone who used to be married to an illegal immigrant, with real experience in what it's like to live that life, I can promise you that illegal immigrants aren't in the US because they want to be--they're in the US so that they can survive. And furthermore, no one asked permission from my Native American ancestors before coming here, so if you think about it realistically, every one of you is descended from illegal immigrants.

While I agree that there is a major immigration problem in the southwestern US, I do not think that this new Arizona law is the right way to solve it. The support for this law is a result of ignorance, mistrust and xenophobia. This fear is being fed by the right wing hate talkers. That a large majority of the electorate supports it, is cause for real concern.

The racial profiling that is bound to be a part of this law's enforcement, is a frightening precedent that should concern us all. Imagine, if a law was passed in the Caribbean that allowed the police to arrest anyone with blond hair and blue eyes because they might be criminals. That is exactly what the Arizona law will do to anyone who 'looks' like a Mexican or other Latino. That will be the beginning of a police state in America.

I also disagree that illegal immigrants cost us money. In fact, they generate billions of dollars in taxed and untaxed earnings, while using far fewer public services. Heck, the economy of Arizona and New Mexico would probably collapse without the cheap labor that illegal immigrants provide. There are other ways to license and control immigration. Going on a witch hunt is not the American way.

Very true, STXer. There is room for a common sense approach here. Rather than this racist approach which opens the door for ethnicity as probable cause, why not use illegal immigration for an add-on charge for people who are already committing crimes? That way, if people are just in the US, working hard, minding their own business, not making trouble for anyone, they can pay a substantial fine for entering without papers, submit to a comprehensive criminal background check in both countries, and be put at the bottom of the waiting list for a green card, with immigrants trying to enter the legal way taking priority. If, however, they are convicted of a crime at any time before gaining citizenship, THEN they can be deported, with significant jail time for re-entry after deportation. That would make much more sense than turning "driving while looking Hispanic" into a stopping offense and probable cause for checking one's papers.

And who, exactly, would make sure these people pay a fine and get into some sort of "immigration queue", if there is no one that can even check their status in the first place?

Very true, STXer. There is room for a common sense approach here. Rather than this racist approach which opens the door for ethnicity as probable cause, why not use illegal immigration for an add-on charge for people who are already committing crimes? That way, if people are just in the US, working hard, minding their own business, not making trouble for anyone, they can pay a substantial fine for entering without papers, submit to a comprehensive criminal background check in both countries, and be put at the bottom of the waiting list for a green card, with immigrants trying to enter the legal way taking priority. If, however, they are convicted of a crime at any time before gaining citizenship, THEN they can be deported, with significant jail time for re-entry after deportation. That would make much more sense than turning "driving while looking Hispanic" into a stopping offense and probable cause for checking one's papers.

It won't let me add this, but I strongly recommend that people who think illegal immigrants live off welfare take a better look at what the laws actually are. In most states, unless you have a valid Social Security number, you don't get benefits. So it's just false. The commonly heard complaint that "they don't pay taxes" is another fallacy--every worker in the United States who receives a paycheck from an employer has taxes automatically deducted from payroll. The difference is that without valid documentation, the immigrant is unable to file a tax return to get anything back.
In addition, it is a deliberate lie to claim that immigrants detract from the US economy. In fact, a recent study by the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that immigrants add 37 billion dollars per year to the nation's economy. The idea that immigrants "steal" American jobs is equally false; Patricia Cortes of the University of Chicago writes that natives with a high school diploma or better actually benefit from the low-priced labor that undocumented immigrants provide, because the low wages the immigrants are earning leads to lower prices for the goods and services they provide, thus increasing the purchasing power of the consumer. Furthermore, there's no such thing as a "stolen" job. After the jobs in the small manufacturing town where I lived went overseas, I can testify firsthand that no one is entitled to a job. A job is an at-will relationship between an employer and an employee. To steal means to take something that another person owns. There is no ownership in the job market--the employer chooses you, or he doesn't, at his discretion.

The illegals have just about bankrupted the hospitals in AZ.
I think what bothers me the most is that they come up and do not want to fit in, they want us to change to fit them. They want every thing in both English and Spanish.
When the economy fell, many of the illegals left AZ. The crime rate dropped almost 30%. Of course the liberal media said it was because the police was all of a sudden doing such a great job.
What part of illegal don't people understand???

Yes, if I was in their position I too would probably come North for a better life. But I would learn the language and try to fit in!

There is a misconception born of ignorance that people want to be illegal. If legal status were being granted, I can guarantee you that the majority of immigrants would take advantage of it. Real crimes (not simple traffic stops) should result in papers being checked and, if found to be invalid, deportation. But the vast majority of illegal immigrants are just ordinary people who are trying to escape starvation, who would jump at the chance to move out of the shadows and into mainstream society. You couldn't live the life that undocumented immigrants in this country live, I guarantee it. And until you've seen your spouse off to work with the fear that his workplace could be raided and you'd never see him again, or had a student not show up in the preschool class you teach because the three-year-old, by virtue of having been carried in his mother's arms before he even knew what a border was, is somehow a criminal and has been "detained for removal," you don't know enough about the situation to say that this law is fair. I can tell you there's nothing normal about a system in which a child who's so young that he still has to wear a Pull-Up at naptime can be a criminal. The problem is that those in favor of this bill that legalizes racial profiling are forgetting that these are not stray dogs we're rounding up. They're normal people who ask for forgiveness, rather than permission, for doing what your ancestors did too. The difference is, my ancestors, like these immigrants, were not white enough for European settlers to count them as human. So the Anglos did what they want to do now--rounded up the brown people and put them where the white man thought they belonged.

Also, for the record, the United States does not have a legal official language.

I am a first generation American. My parents immigrated to the U.S. legally. They had minimal education and did not speak English, but they took menial jobs, learned English, and assimilated. The U.S. accepts many legal immigrants every year, but of necessity has restrictions. I have numerous extended family members who would have liked to follow my parents here, but they were denied entry to the U.S. for any purpose other than visitation.

Illegal immigrants are disrespecting American law, and I support penalizing that disrespect with deportation. What's more, I do not think legally visiting the U.S., or being here illegally, should confer U.S. citizenship on off-spring, as this incentivizes illegal immigration. If parents here illegally know their children will be denied public health and education services, parents will be more likely to remain in their own countries.

I understand that life is untenable in many places, but the U.S. is unable to function well with essentially open borders. We may have to pay more for hotel rooms, restaurant meals, and other services whose prices are currently artificially low due to the use of illegal labor, but I think it's a fair trade for greater local, state, and federal government stability.

I am sympathetic to immigrants. My wife and I are (legal) immigrants, and absolutely every US resident or citizen that I know is an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant. Immigrants built this country. Or rather, they stole it and built it, but anyway. I think that, generally speaking, immigrants are ambitious, are trying to improve their lives, and are not moving here to take advantage of social programs. They leave their native countries because the opportunities for advancement are limited back home. The US must be awesome, because we attract a huge number of immigrants. “Of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as much as the next nine countries combined,” according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration#United_States and http://www.migrationinformation.org/Usfocus/display.cfm?ID=585 . If any other country ever takes over that position, we’re probably finished.

But it just amazes me that anybody who manages to cross the border basically gets a free pass, and that it has taken this long to have this level of practical enforcement of immigration law. Somehow, if an illegal gets into the US, they can stay here for years, un-checked. The biggest restrictions were that they couldn’t leave or re-enter the country by normal means, and they couldn’t get arrested for something else, or they’d get snagged.

So as a practical matter, if we want to enforce immigration laws, we have to start enforcing immigration laws. Maybe it would be more palatable if, instead of questioning people based on skin color or accents, they made it more of a random thing. Eg: stop every 10th vehicle, bicycle or pedestrian at a roadblock and ask for papers, regardless of how you look or sound. If legal residents are OK with being stopped (and they would be the bulk of people stopped), then illegal immigration would be stopped in its tracks. If legal residents balk, then we’d have a problem.

As a separate matter, “Sixteen years ago, a California ballot measure prohibiting undocumented immigrants from using social services, health care, and education helped to turn California from a reliably Republican state in presidential elections to one that is a virtual Democratic lock…” http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100428/ts_csm/297338 The same thing might happen in Arizona if the new law gets out the Hispanic vote.

But it just amazes me that anybody who manages to cross the border basically gets a free pass, and that it has taken this long to have this level of practical enforcement of immigration law. Somehow, if an illegal gets into the US, they can stay here for years, un-checked. The biggest restrictions were that they couldn’t leave or re-enter the country by normal means, and they couldn’t get arrested for something else, or they’d get snagged.

A free pass? Have you even read what I described? Shortly after my ex and I split up, his workplace was raided. Because he couldn't show documentation that he was legal, he was shipped back. Rather than innocent until proven guilty, immigration law allows for the assumption of guilt until one is proven innocent.

After that, I lived with a guy from Mexico who had only been in the country for a year and hadn't learned but a handful of phrases in English. Our home was broken into one afternoon while I was out of town. He came home, discovered it, and called 911. After that, he called me, and I had time to drive 100 miles back home before the police finally arrived. They just assumed that because he had very little English, he wouldn't make waves if they did a half-ass job. Imagine their surprise when they finally puttered into the drive and discovered a very angry native-born woman writing down their squad car number. "But the call came from some Mexican," they told me. "Some Mexican," like he was somehow less human than they, and as if the victim's ethnicity had any bearing on the crime itself.

When I was working for a preschool in NC, there was a little boy in my classroom named Enrique. He was a beautiful, cheerful, affectionate little boy whose only real disadvantage was that his English was limited. Someone with an ax to grind with his mother called in a tip to Immigration, and a few weeks later, ICE came knocking on their door and took the mother, the five-year-old, and the three-year-old, and "detained" them until they could be deported. Arresting a child who still has problems with waking up from nap in time to make it to the potty before he wets himself is not my idea of a "free pass." I could have made real progress with that child. And yes, it was illegal for his mother to bring her children into the country without papers, but if your children faced starvation, would there be a law in this world that could force you to allow it?

If, gods forbid, you've ever been in a position of having to rely on the ER as your only source of medical care, you know exactly how far below a reasonable level that care can be. People without papers are ineligible for Medicaid and for most forms of private insurance, so in many cases that's the only option they have.

If all you see is "them," you will never get to know the real people who make up the group you judge so harshly. Ideas of how you've heard life is for them are only ideas. You don't actually know and can't give an informed judgment.

If European countries shared a border with the United States, I wonder if my Irish ancestors would have been here legally. Or how about my Italian or Russian or German friends' ancestors?

stephyjh: I sit corrected. No free pass for everybody. Those who are caught while trying to make a better life for themselves and their families have my sympathies. Enforcement is also lax enough that a lot of illegals can stay here for years.

I think immigration is good for the US, and the number of immigrants that come here is a sign of what a great, attractive country we are. Immigrants to the US are generally ambitious and productive people.

The key word: "ILLEGAL" ... it's not rocket science! If you're in the U.S. illegally, you have broken the law. How is this so difficult to comprehend?

~Jill~

The key word: "ILLEGAL" ... it's not rocket science! If you're in the U.S. illegally, you have broken the law. How is this so difficult to comprehend?

~Jill~

You are correct, that coming to the US without documentation is not legal. That is the nail that proponents of this Arizona law are trying to hang their hat. However, honesty might require many of those people to admit that they just don't feel comfortable with a large population of brown, non English speaking people.

The solution is not to create a 'police state', but to find a way to regulate and enforce the federal laws that are already on the books. The federal government has not done a good job of immigration control. During Both Bush (father and son) and Clinton administrations the government at the request of big business, refused to actively find good solutions to the Mexican border problems. The Obama administration has had it's hands full with an obstructive congress that has slowed progress down far too much.

Remember, immigration whether legal or illegal is good economically for the USA. So, the human issue aside, we are still talking about xenophobia rather than the letter of the law. As I said in my previous and next to last post, there is a problem and it needs to be solved, but racial profiling and police state procedures is not the answer.

I lived in Boston for many years. I can assure that while we don't share a border, there were PLENTY of illegal Irish in Boston (with a surge of quasi-legal and illegal Irish during the years of the Big Dig.)

If European countries shared a border with the United States, I wonder if my Irish ancestors would have been here legally. Or how about my Italian or Russian or German friends' ancestors?

saw an intersting movie once " a day without a mexican" . i have known plenty of illegal imigrants who were good hard working people trying to support their families in other countries. the only problem, they tried to take the shortcut to life in the us and got deported. because they tried to do it the illegal way, they might not be allowed to come back.

arizona has huge issues with the drug cartels and illegal boarder crossings. not sure how it compares to the illegals in florida of which there are many. seems cuban illegals are given a very special privilage of the wet foot/ dry foot policy that no other illegal immigrant gets. thats completely wrong.