Arizona law targets immigrants

Ronald Forsell
The State of Arizona recently enacted a policy that seeks to curtail illegal immigration.  Several prominent politicians, sports leagues, and at last count 32 of my Facebook friends have voiced opposition to the bill. What is in this law that is so offensive?  The main Facebook group against this law states that this law will:

“The new law makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. Immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500. Other provisions allow lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and make it illegal to hire undocumented workers for day labor or knowingly transport them.”
Does any of that sound bad?  Should people be punished for breaking the law?   
Another concern is that this will encourage racial profiling.  However under the law racial profiling is specifically forbidden. 

Officers may only ask to see documentation during a legitimate traffic stop, or investigation with probable cause based on reasonable suspicion. Under the Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio¸ the court held that police officers are allowed to stop and investigate people they reasonably suspect had committed a crime without violating their Fourth Amendment rights.

People in Arizona will not be forced to present identification if they are merely of Hispanic or Latino descent.  In fact this law prohibits racial profiling, and inquiries into a person’s immigration status can only be made during a legitimate traffic stop or a police investigation. 

I wish that the State of Arizona had not passed this law; I wish that the Congress had passed this law years ago, or I wish the border patrol was properly funded so they could enforce the federal laws that already exist.  However, since the Congress has not or will not pass a comprehensive immigration law, the State of Arizona had to. 

What kind of immigration policy should the Congress implement? Well Arizona certainly made a good start, but we need to go further and punish companies that hire illegal immigrants, and enforce our other existing laws and their respective punishments.
While these steps are an ideal goal, the Arizona law is a pretty good start.

Tyler McDanel

The recent Arizona immigration law, sb1070, has made headline news in the past few weeks. Many people are signing petitions and sending them to Washington, as well as speaking out directly against the law.

The law enables employers, who are thought to be harboring illegal immigrants, to be investigated, as well as making it illegal to transport an illegal immigrant into the state of Arizona.

The part of the law that is receiving the most scrutiny however is allowing “a law enforcement officer, without a warrant, to arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the U.S.” (i.e. being illegal).

What this means is that officers can pull aside anyone who looks “illegal,” and ask for documentation. Given the fact that the police would probably never pull over a white person, as they are all assumed to be legal, the law is directed primarily against Latinos, albeit in a not-stated way.

Many are critical of the fact that this law singles out people of a specific race for examination. The Nazi’s did this to the Jews during WWII “papiere bitte,” (papers please).
Furthermore, America has had a nasty history of discriminating against illegal aliens. In 1924, the National Origins Act prevented individuals of an “undesirable race” to be allowed into the United States.

Then, in 1954, the nation launched what was sordidly named “Operation Wetback” to detain and send back Mexicans who the United States had brought over to work during WWII. Sadly, these are only two instances of many more.

A point worth considering when regarding immigration to the United States is the fact that European immigrants were once “illegal” as well. The chain of immigrants in early American history were primarily Anglo-Saxon.

This changed later, when immigrants from Germany and elsewhere started to arrive.
Notable Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin, were notorious for their dislike of German and other non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants.

Thus, the dislike of immigrants is nothing new.

With the arrival of immigrants from Southern Europe, as well as from Eastern Europe,immigration laws suddenly changed. These immigrants were viewed as “undesirable,” and thus legislation was enacted to keep them out of the country.
Even more drastic measures were taken to keep out Asians and non-whites. These immigrants were even further from the status quo.

Given this information, it is clearly evident that racist legislation in America is nothing new. Even though laws are laws, they are not necessarily moral and just laws.

The United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) is supposed to oversee that laws are constitutional, although this is not always the case.

Take the case of Plessey v. Ferguson, where the “separate but equal” clause was held. For all it is worth, the USSC is even fundamentally flawed, left to the discretion of its Justices.