Imagine that legislators from a cash-strapped state pass a law which diverts local police department resources away from violent crime, forcing them to spend important time and energy arresting individuals who left home without their driver's license. Imagine that the same measures had the practical effect of leaving residents hesitant about contacting police to report crimes and nervous about leaving their homes for fear that a normal grocery trip may end in an arrest, causing local businesses to suffer. Finally, imagine that the law passed greatly increased the likelihood that unprincipled and abusive individuals now have greater leverage with which to exploit their workers, or threaten wives and girlfriends.
Most voters would consider such outcomes to be untenable. Add in the element of "immigration," however, and the normal rules, and measures of effectiveness -- like safety, economic efficiency and protection of civil liberties -- are all cast aside, at least in Arizona.
Arizona SB 1070 is a lesson in shortsighted and counterproductive lawmaking, with potentially devastating effects for the state's communities. As Washington now turns its attention to drafting comprehensive immigration reform legislation that will actually work for America, SB 1070 offers an important illustration of exactly what not to do.
SB 1070 rests on the fallacy that all individuals who live, work, and learn in America without immigration papers are criminals. They may be volunteers at church, loyal employees, coaches for little league, and nannies to children, but still they are considered "criminals" in Arizona, just by virtue of lacking paperwork.
Forcing local law enforcement to prosecute these "criminals" comes at a very high price.
By requiring local law enforcement officers to inquire about the immigration status of any person they stop, detain or arrest, whom they "reasonably suspect" may be in the country illegally, diverts valuable resources away from the real work of the police -- community safety -- and forces them to focus on immigration enforcement.
Secondly, such requirements actively undermine community policing efforts and destroy the trust built between police departments and the communities they serve. By compelling police officers to assume immigration enforcement duties, legislators eviscerate the relationship-building efforts of officers who have worked hard to ensure that immigrant crime victims and witnesses will feel safe coming forward and working with police and prosecutors to fight crime.
A third, and perhaps the most insidious, result of this legislation, is the culture of impunity that it breeds for those who exploit and abuse immigrants. By frightening immigrants into silence and discouraging them from interacting with police in any capacity, these laws send a strong message to perpetrators of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking and other crimes that they will not be prosecuted so long as they target immigrant victims.
The "immigration enforcement above all else" model has a particularly brutal impact on immigrant women. Immigrant women often confront an impossible choice: do they risk deportation to report a crime? Or, do they endure abuse and exploitation at the hands of violent partners or opportunistic employers, with sometimes fatal results, in order to stay with their children, and near the only support networks they know?
As written, the Arizona law compounds immigrant women's vulnerability. For the immigrant women whose spouse or employer controls access to their immigration papers, SB 1070's requirement that all persons carry with them documentation proving that they are lawful residents will put immigrant women at greater risk of detention and potential removal from the U.S. Fearing that a trip to the store may lead to detention, these women will become ever more beholden to abusive husbands and controlling bosses.
Worse, Arizona's law will lead to a dramatic increase in separation of children from their immigrant mothers. As immigration enforcement increases and is expanded by Arizona law to include the "crime" of not carrying proof of legal immigration status, more primary caretaker mothers will be detained and separated from their children. Children of immigrant parents will be stranded at school or child care without a parent to pick them up at the end of the day because the parent has been placed in jail by local police.
While we can deplore Arizona's passage of such a dangerous bill, we must nevertheless thank them for reminding Washington that our nation desperately needs a smarter, better solution. We need to secure our borders to protect us from real criminals that traffic drugs and smuggle human beings into the country. However, we won't fight these crimes, or make our communities safer, by labeling all immigrants "criminals." Instead of employing easy rhetoric, we need real reform.
Follow Irasema Garza on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LegalMomentum
Steven P. Croley: Arizona's Immigration Statute: Another Devil in the Details
Pamela Alma Weymouth: Telephone Mamas: Separating Families to Serve Our Own
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How illegal immigratio
This Lecture was done in 1999. - http://www
Looking at the chart when he gets there,
What they estimated in 1999 for 2010 is spot on what actually happened.
[Estimated in 1999 it would be just over 300 million in 2010.]
When he gets to the gumball demonstrat
Because of illegal immigratio
Build TWICE as many schools.
Build TWICE as many roads.
Build TWICE as many sewer plants.
Build TWICE as many power plants.
Build TWICE as much about anything else.
Had to add twice as many cops and firemen and teachers. [Or leave areas under serviced.]
And use TWICE as many trees and other natural resources.
Anyone that thinks illegal immigratio
If you don't want every city in the US to become a giant LA Slum within our or our children's lifetimes then it has to STOP NOW!
~
Link to just the chart. [Sorry about the quality.]
http://www
While I can understand how many people want the law enforced, morally you have to take in to account the kind of harm by making a huge number of people essentiall
Then there's the safety factor: an illegal witnesses an accident or a crime, they have a huge disincenti
This is a dangerous law, literally, and not just for illegal immigrants
But finally, you conflate legal with illegal like many on this issue, and it really makes it hard to discuss the topic openly and honestly. By doing so, you label genuine concern over laws and illegal immigratio
But have you considered
And you have to close the border, obviously. 1,800 miles of border, much of it out in the middle of nowhere. 24/7, can you guess how many thousands of people the government will have to hire, and the billions per year it will cost?
When you've finished with all that, the jobs the illegals filled will still be there. The unskilled labor jobs exist. Markets are funny that way, they don't exactly follow the law, the follow economic forces.
So you need to set up a guest worker program.
At the end of the day, you've spent tens of billions of dollars and vastly expanded the federal government with a gigantic new program, all so you could exchange an illegal Hispanic worker with pretty much the same person, but with a worker visa of some sort.
Now with an amnesty you could accomplish the same thing, but without spending tens of billions Keep government smaller, save a lot of tax dollars.
The unemployme
The unemployme
For all Americans unemployme
Constructi
Farming, fishing, and forestry occupation
Production occupation
Transporta
Service occupation
Total US Unemployed Citizens and Legal Residents = 15,260,000
This figure excludes 5,951,000 Persons who want a job but are left out for various reasons.
Total Number of Americans Looking for Work = 21,211,000
Pew Center estimates indicate 7.5 million Illegal Immigrants work in the USA with the majority employed in agricultur
Meanwhile Management
Illegal Immigrants compete directly with Americans for jobs. Illegal Immigratio
I did the work they do now, washing windows, cleaning toilets, serving burgers, to pay for my school, and to become a rocket scientist and engineer. Those very jobs that sustained me are no longer available, filled with the influx of cheap labor. If you do not speak spanish, hard to get a job in fast food.
I have issue with all illegals, whether from England and Sweden (I have known many) to Chile. When the laws are ignored, the nation is weakened.
I do support improvemen
We do not want those who will do any work, not at this price. The cheap labor is the downfall.. we must make our children learn the value of work, and the start of that is delivering papers every day on time at age 11, in any weather, without any help. At age 15, work at Arbys or Wendys, clean the toilets, serve the food, and smile. At age 18, you are an adult, be prepared to support yourself, and not cost your parents a dime. If you mutually agree college is the path, pay your own way, work and save.
I read your article with interest. I have issue with one of your basic assumption
I am a fiscally conservati
"SB 1070 rests on the fallacy that all individual
Yes, they are criminals, at the Federal and now State level. As criminals, they need to be deported to their country of Origin. In appropriat
I most cases I would not. Instead I encourage their return to their homelands, and hope that they march, and protest, and do whatever is necessary to make their country a good place to be, with fairness and liberty for all. As was done in the US, so they can do their. Anything less than that is a failure of effort. They have taken the "easy" way out, breaking the law.
All the law does it ask police to enforce laws that are already in place. Make no mistake about it, being in this country without being legalized is a crime, and these laws should be enforced for the protection of all. We have rapists, killers, and drug dealers washing over the border and threatenin
We need immigratio
Then Reid can pass it with 50+1 votes...an
But bashing Mexicans is so SATISFYING for you white trash old Minutemen.
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Not illegal immigrants
You better read it again
To comprehens
One of the main reasons the whole deal got out of control is because officials were not allowed to ask about legal residency status. Now they are - under the appropriat
not one day, not one dime
You liberals are the real racist.
bank on it.