Arizona’s dreadful new anti-immigrant law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer within hours of Pres. Obama denouncing it, isn’t the slam-dunk wedge issue Republicans might have hoped for. Sure, chronically aggrieved Tea Party types who take in too much Lou Dobbs are thrilled. Guilty until proven innocent pretty much sums up how the law will work for most members of the brown community.
The new law requires police to determine whether a person is in the United States legally. It also requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there is reason to suspect they’re in the United States illegally.
So that means people who are totally legal can’t go out to get the newspaper without documentation. If you are a native-born citizen, imagine how it would change your life to be held to that requirement. Walking the dog? I need to see your papers. Late night run to CVS so you’ll have milk in the house in the morning? Sorry, we need you to prove you’re in the country legally. Taking an elderly parent to the E.R.? Not so fast — spend a few minutes gathering up your documents before you grab your keys.
But like any measure that seeks to constrain one group, the new law’s fallout will hobble its supporters as well — specifically, Republicans who are themselves Latino-Americans. In an impassioned press release, a group called Somos Republicans called out Gov. Brewer and the red-faced anti-immigrant extremists who passed the legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Russell Pearce.
The greatest leaders in our nation had courage, and we believe that Brewer made her decision in an effort to save her political career…Pearce and Brewer do not see the unintended consequences of their actions, and it appears that they were willing to make decisions that affect us at the cost of trampling on our Constitutional Rights…
It is unfortunate that our own members of the Republican Party believe that we have to trample on our Constitution in order to “enforce our laws.” We believe that Pearce is easing the requirements for “probable cause” and his attempt in expanding our government. What Pearce’s bill proves is that he does not have the answer for illegal immigration within the confines of the American Constitution, and in fact he is not solving the problem by creating more problems.
We believe United States Hispanic citizens have a right to be safe in their person from illegal searches and seizures, and we believe Pearce’s efforts are violating that.
The group goes on, in true Republican fashion, to blame the whole mess on Pres. Obama, for not forcing Congress to pass its own immigration reform within the 15 months he’s been in office. Pulling America back from the brink of the next Depression, getting farther with health care reform than the last seven presidents, fighting two wars, and keeping together a country that hasn’t been this divided since 1861 might have distracted Obama from immigration reform, but it’s on his agenda.
The real question is where Republican candidates of Latino descent will stand on this issue. Specifically, where will Marco Rubio, who refers to himself as a child of “exiles,” not “immigrants,” in his campaign ads stand? As a Cuban-American, Rubio is already in legally elevated space. The United States’ Cuba policy (wet foot, dry foot as we call it in Florida) makes no sense. It boils down to: if you are Cuban and in no danger whatsoever, you have total amnesty and are welcome with open arms. If you are Haitian and death in your own country if you return is a certainty, gosh, sorry dude, that’s a bummer, but you’re going back.
Rubio has already shown he’s willing to do most anything to win the U.S. Senate race. Toeing the party line to pander to Tea Party Republicans by bashing immigrants will doubtless be no big deal.
Latino Republicans? You mean all three of them???
Nikolai, I live in Florida, where Latino Republicans are as common as palm trees.
There used to be a lot of Latino Republicans in California, but then the GOP purged them out when they passed Proposition 187 in 1994. Now Latinos represent just 9 percent of the party. I’ll bet we can expect to see the same loss of Latino members in the Arizona GOP over the next few years.
Now that people of color are being stopped and asked for their papers I guess Mr Orangeman Boehner had better carry his birth certificate!
How exactly is it hateful to stop illegal immigration? Do YOU enjoy paying higher taxes and getting less for them b/c of people who don’t contribute? I have no objection to anyone who wants to come to this country. But they need to do it in a controlled manner. Otherwise, unless you’re willing to pay the difference for me, please stfu with this “hateful law” nonsense. It’s clear you live elsewhere.
Cletus, I live “elsewhere” in a state that gets its fair share of immigrants of both types – legal and illegal. There’s nothing hateful about stopping the illegal variety, but doing it (and there is no evidence this method will be effective) by asking every brown person who goes out in public to prove they are NOT illegal is hateful. The Nazis required Jews to display Stars of David — do you not get the hateful similarities?
OMG! You mean it’s Nazi like to ask Mexicans if they’re Mexican? What a dastardly world we live in! Do you hear yourself? Do you actually take yourself seriously? There is an illegal immigration problem. That’s a fact. The federal government is doing nothing. That’s a fact. It costs the taxpayers of AZ money they need not be spending. That’s a fact. If you see this as the same thing the Nazi’s did to the jews then you need to stop smoking that sh*t and come down to earth. Or at the very least pick up a history book. You’re allusion is laughable. But, just to be agreeable, what alternative do you suggest?
Cletus, if this is you when you’re being agreeable, I’d hate to talk to you when you’re disagreeable. My only suggestion is to plow those resources into traditional border patrol interdiction.
I object to a lot of your assumptions, though. “You mean it’s Nazi like to ask Mexicans if they’re Mexican?” Mexican is not synonymous with illegal. Immigrant is not synonymous with illegal. Only illegal is the same thing as illegal. So, to ask the question you asked me, “Do you hear yourself?”
Forgive me. I shall try to be worthy of your grandeur. Your allusion that this is in anyway, shape or form reminiscent of what happened in Nazi Germany is laughable garbage. It shows a demonstrable ignorance of history and law. It also shows a decided dimness regarding current events. Your suggestion has been advanced by the citizenry of AZ, many times. Has it come to pass? Has the citizenry been patient while waiting for your suggestion to be implemented? Clearly. How long should they wait? Until *you’re* satisfied? Bravado isn’t going to solve this problem. And in case you missed it(you appear to miss a lot) there is recourse under the law for people who are mistreated as a result of this law. If you object to the standard you should have spoken up quite some time ago when the standard was relaxed from probable cause to reasonable suspicion. So unless you objected to that… once again.. please stfu and give me a break. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain why you find citing facts so disagreeable? I bet I know…. you never let facts get in the way of your absurd conclusions now do you? The federal government has abdicated it’s responsibility in this manner. Why aren’t you whining about that? I think anyone who wants to come here should. But I don’t want to pay for it. If you would like to pay my share that would be splendid. Otherwise… you guessed it… please stfu and give me a break.
Or another alternative to me stfu is that you can take your nasty, abusive thoughts and comments to a blog you agree more closely with.
I’m happy to listen to any non knee jerk idea you have. You’re obviously an idealist. What happens when the ideals don’t work? Should everyone just roll over and play dead? This has been a long time coming. If you’re so concerned about it where was your indignation and big mouth when something more temperate could have been done instead of a law that treats dandruff by decapitation? It’s easy to bitch and offer no alternatives. Btw, I’m not a tea bagger, I voted for Mr. Obama (and would again) nor do I align myself with the republican party. But not everything the tea baggers say is wrong. Not everything the democrats say is right. And if you think and act strictly along party lines then YOU are the problem. Neither party gives a rats patootie about you. These people are here illegally. That costs me money that I could be spending on my family or for the education of my children. I’ve noticed too that out of the extensive number of posts I’ve read on other boards that no one has suggested a sunset clause in the law. It was the inability of government to do it’s job that lead to the problem. So you choose now to complain about government not doing it’s job? Don’t you find that a bizzare and selective distortion of what’s at issue? So guess what sweetie… you’re guilty too. Every reasonable opportunity to handle this problem when it was small was discussed and dismissed. So please forgive me if I genuinely believe that poor planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part. You’re a good blogger and generally I agree with you. But don’t get confused.
NO. We do not support SB 1070.
And, yes….we are blaming Obama because he said he would pass immigration reform within 90 days of his Presidency. He didn’t live up to his promises, and had he lived up to his promises, we would not be experiencing this crisis today.
Obama said:
““…Voy a hacer (inmigración) una de
las prioridades principales en mi
primer año como Presidente…”
DeeDee –
I expect candidate Obama made that pledge before Republican malfeasance and ineptitude crashed the economy and the Bush Recession began. If so, I am glad the president put rescuing the American financial system at the top of his priorities list, as Trish said above.
And remind us — what did your beloved Dear Leader George Bush and his lockstep-goose-stepping Republican Congress do about immigration? Oh yeah, they built a wall. How many tens of billions of dollars has it cost so far, and, except for destroying ancient animal habitats, how has it worked out?
But it’s not all bad news. One good result of the Bush presidency: Because he and his GOP Congress crashed the economy, illegal immigration is at its lowest point in decades.
With a name like ‘Cletus’, I’m not surprised that you are an idiot. I cannot wait until you old, paranoid, racist rednecks die out.
James, I hold 2 advanced degrees. 1 in physics and the other in mathematics. I’m neither old nor paranoid. I am, however, completely fed up with the inability of government to do it’s job. Btw, what does it say about your ability to reason or parse an argument if you use the words “redneck” and “racist” in the same sentence? So if you’ve declared me to be an idiot is that simply b/c you recognize your own kind? LOL!
But Cletus, what is it you’d like the government to do? It would cost billions and billions of dollars to arrest, incarcerate, adjudicate and deport 12 million people.
Forcing them underground, as the Arizona law will do, creates lawless Third World zones inside our communities, where innocent people can be murdered, raped and robbed without recourse; where sanitation is iffy and health-care is not available so contagious diseases go untreated and spread to the wider community; and where children deprived of education and training will become a time bomb set to go off in 12 to 20 years in the form of millions of untrained and unskilled young adults who can’t find jobs — which is exactly the recipe for homegrown terrorism. See Ireland and Israel, for examples.
Plus, it is not true they don’t pay taxes. Poor undocumented workers pay as much in taxes as poor American-born workers. Most of them pay into Social Security, but will not be able to collect because they’re using bogus SSNs. Meanwhile, some experts say that legalizing all 12 million would make Social Security and Medicare solvent immediately.
And it is not true that the government has done nothing. The Republicans built the wall at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, and they have beefed up security at the border exponentially over what it was.
And finally on the points, illegal immigration is down — way below previous levels because of the Bush Recession.
As a Californian, I can’t say I’m thrilled that this is happening outside the law, but I do know that what 99.9999% of the Mexicans who come here want is a job and a safe place to raise their kids. They’re not taking “our” jobs — our jobs are going to highly skilled folks who come here legally from India, Korea and elsewhere.
The only way to truly resolve this crisis is to force Mexico to change its current system from the near-oligarchy it is today — the world’s richest man is a Mexican, according to Forbes — to a system that can sustain a middle class and provide services for its huge and sprawling underclass. It also wouldn’t hurt to convince the Catholic Church to stop telling all those poor people that they risk going to hell if they don’t have as many children as they possible can.
The best way to end the drug violence along the border is to legalize drugs in the US. That would stop the violence tomorrow.
But even if those solutions were put in place tomorrow, we’d still have 12 million Mexican citizens living here. After living with this crisis for 21 years (we moved to Los Angeles in 1989), I can tell you that the only practicable solution is to put them on the path to citizenship and assimilation.
What they’ve done in Arizona is not really a good-faith effort to solve the problem, it’s a political tactic to help them win in November 2010, and it will probably succeed, if the passage of Prop 187 with a 59 percent majority here in ’94 is a guide. Long term, of course, Prop 187 has permanently hobbled the conservative wing of the California GOP, but Gov. Pete Wilson didn’t care about the long term when he put Prop 187 on the ballot to coincide with his reelection bid — just as Gov. Jan Brewer wants to win in November and doesn’t care if it destroys her party a decade from now.
Jon, we can play whatever semantic game you’d care to. At the end of the day illegals are a fiscal burden. Do you deny this? I have no problem with anyone from Mexico (or anywhere else for that matter) coming to this country as a legal immigrant. But the operative word there is “legal”. Why don’t you look up the laws dealing with illegals in Mexico and ask yourself why there’s no reciprocity. Additionally, if bank robberies declined from 1000 last year to 750 this year is it your argument that we ought to grant amnesty to the felons committing those crimes? The only thing you’ve said that I agree with is the legalization of drugs. If people want to snort draino and run into a brick wall with a hard on… that’s ok with me. Freedom means the freedom to make choices other people think are bad. And so long as you deprive no one of life, liberty or property in the pursuit of those activities I think everyone else should mind their own business. Do you think illegal immigration meets this definition? If so… how?
Well, first, answer my question. How do you think the problem should be solved? As I mentioned, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought for the last two decades and I don’t see a practicable solution other than what I mentioned.
What makes this situation hard to manage is that we treat it strictly as a domestic political issue, which ignores the fact that it is actually an international crisis. Citizens of a foreign country are invading us, albeit on an ad hoc, non-military basis.
At the extremes, one reaction would be to do nothing, let ’em in willy-nilly. The other extreme would be to invade and conquer Mexico, which sounds absurd, except that we have done it before, in 1847. And we invaded and conquered Iraq for far less (actually, no) legitimate reasons.
I’m not advocating war, but it’s odd how the Mexican government is a non-factor in this debate in Washington. Pressuring Mexico to help solve the problem is off the table as far as our government is concerned, and has been during the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and now Obama. If Americans invaded Mexico, you can bet their government would be suing ours to cover the social services costs, at least.
And it’s not semantics. Citizens of Mexico, El Salvador and the rest contribute at least $7 billion into Social Security every year, according to the article I sourced earlier. If your main concern is the cost burden, the fastest and most efficient solution is to legalize them so they start paying their full share.
I think the problem should be controlled by enforcing the federal laws that are already on the books. The federal government has made it clear that it isn’t interested in doing that. So what we have is the immigration equivalent of New Orleans/Katrina. Their effort is a complete failure. So now I ask you; what do YOU think should be done? How much better or worse do you think the citizens of New Orleans would have fared if prior to Katrina they said “You know.. we really have a problem here… Da Gubmnt is blowing smoke up our ass and we’re really gonna be in trouble unless we do something. They haven’t and won’t address the problem so let’s take care of it ourselves”. Do you object to this line of reasoning? If so what do you offer as an alternative?
If I goto France I can be stopped at any time for any reason and asked for my passport. If I check into a French hotel the desk clerk is obliged by law to hold my passport. If I goto Mexico I can be stopped at any time for any reason and asked for my passport. And the penalties in Mexico are far more harsh than they are here. These are only 2 of a myriad of examples.
So all this “papers please.. the Nazi’s are coming” is just theater. Well.. theater and a decided ignorance of history, law and custom.
“Citizens of a foreign country are invading us,…” Ok… so you at least recognize and admit this is a problem. We’re making progress. The whole rest of your post, basically, supports what I’m saying. I notice you don’t really offer a solution yourself. And I don’t think anyone is advocating war.
As to the 7 billion dollar influx to SS, those are mostly from legals and 7 billion $ is a paltry sum compared to the amount Congress draws from SS. Is that the only fiscal sink created by this activity(illegal immigration)? So if they contribute 10$ to a fund of 10,000$ I really gotta say… big deal. All you’ve done is give 1 example of many and said “well.. it’s not THAT bad”. And my response is “are you kidding me or what?”. It’s smoke to distract the viewer. And as for the Catholic Church.. how is that my problem? I cast off the church years ago. If people want to be stupid and ruled by superstition why should that affect me or other like minded people that would rather use facts and reason to make decisions rather than appealing to a magic Zombie Israelite on a stick that wants me to eat flesh and drink blood(even if metaphorically)? There’s a reason church and state are supposed to be seperate.
I’ve already made it abundantly clear that I have no problem with anyone who legally wants to come here. But this isn’t a human rights issue. If you think it is then you have an overinflated sense of entitlement and clearly have never faced real hardship in your life. Deport the illegals. If they want back in let them apply for citizenship. If I apply for foreign citizenship I have to show some compelling reason why it’s a good idea to get citizenship. Goto Canadian Embassy website and read the outline for Citizenship. Why should we let anyone in? Why don’t they let anyone in? When you search for a canidate to fill a job do you hire the fellow who just got out of the joint for armed robbery or do you hire the guy who graduated from Harvard Law? Why is that? And why is it wrong to make the discrimination at the border?
No, the claim is, illegals are totally a fiscal burden and don’t contribute anything. That’s just not true. They don’t contribute enough, but many do pay Social Security — and the source I cited said the $7 billion is from illegals only — and they all pay sales tax. Yes, they’re an extra fiscal burden but, because they pay sales taxes, they’re no more a burden than than US-born poor. And, again, if the cost to support them is your central beef, legalizing them so that they pay their fair share of taxes is the fastest and most efficient solution.
But this is a cop out, not a “solution” —
The law says round them up and send them back where they came from. To enforce it would require hiring thousands of new ICE investigators and other staff required to seek and apprehend 12 million people — roughly the population of Illinois (12.9 mil), Pennsylvania (12.6 mil) or Ohio (11.5 mil). It would require building detention centers (also known as concentration camps) along the border to house men, women, babies, children and the elderly and then paying to feed and provide health care for them while they are incarcerated. It would require hiring guards to keep people from escaping from the camps and lawyers and judges to adjudicate their citizenship status. For parents of U.S.-born children, who are U.S. citizens according to the Constitution, this could take months or even years. Since the child-age population of the camps would include American citizens, we’d be obligated to educate them so teachers would have to be hired and classrooms built. And then, when all is said and done, we’d have to pay to transport millions of people back to Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia or wherever.
If it were to cost an average of $10,000 per person to cover all that, that’s $120 billion — minimum. (By comparison, that’s roughly the cost of our occupation of Iraq, which is estimated at $3 billion per month, for 40 months.)
This is why the law isn’t being followed. ICE is not funded at that level. Not hardly.
Look, I’m an extreme Democratic Party partisan. If a Republican says the sky is blue, I assume he’s too stupid to know what he’s talking about, lying or spouting Fox News disinformation. But on this issue, I find myself in the unusual position of generally agreeing with three men I have zero (0) respect for — Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and the John McCain of two or three flip-flops ago.
The most efficient, cost-effective approach is to grant these people quasi-legal status and get them into the tax rolls while withholding citizenship until they’ve gone through the immigration system from the back of the line.
But I’m also serious about forcing Mexico’s hand in this matter. At the core of this crisis, the United States is not responsible for Mexico’s inability to employ or support its own people — this simply is not our problem. Most of the folks who come here would just as rather stay in Mexico, but they can’t feed their kids there. It’s no more insidious than that. They’re not invading to overthrow our government. They’re coming here for jobs.
This issue has Americans fighting each other over domestic policy, when — under any other comparable circumstance — we’d be united in opposition to the foreign country that is the source of the problem.
So that’s the second part of the solution as I see it: Put the screws to Mexico diplomatically. Threaten them with tariffs, embargoes and the usual methods in order to force their government to take ownership of this crisis. NAFTA taught us that we can’t fix Mexico’s corrupt and inefficient economic system from outside — they have to do it themselves. If they won’t do it willingly, then we have to force them to take responsibility for it by any means necessary.
Cletus, is not an idiot, nor is he a Nazi for wanting a solution to the illegal immigration problem the United States is currently facing. Americans are tired, broke, and the middle class now makes minimum wage.
Make them all citizens, make them pay taxes and speak English and the problem will be solved. They should speak English because a long time ago, a lot of immigrants came together speaking many languages…these immigrants were our ancestors who fought the Revolutionary War. In their honor, we must make illegal immigrants pay taxes, and follow our laws. What if this was an invasion of Russian immigrants…we would speak with Russia. We should boycott Mexico…not even allow Americans to visit there. Then Mexican’s government would cooperate. If that doesn’t work then have the good sense to legalize pot and that would wash out the cartels. Americans are a nation of depressed people because on the one hand there are liberal idealists and stupid people like Sarah Palin who can be compared to someone who would round up a lynching party for liberals. The Republicans do not want anything fixed. We are stuck. I am sorry Cletus. I get it and it is not fair to work as hard as we do while a rising tide of illegal immigrants are breaking our laws, sending our money back to Mexico, and not paying taxes. Americans are slinging accusations at each other, bullying each other, shooting our own families, and going for years without employment…Frustration upon frustration. I hate the Arizona bill, but I hope it forces our government to do something now. It is a pretty desperate situation.
It is true that illegals are a fiscal burden. And you can’t make the argument that they aren’t by citing a single source that references a single financial resource(I’m being extremely generous by calling SS a resource when it is, in fact, a liability). The majority of your reply is total fiction for 1 simple reason; it presupposes that ALL illegals must be rounded up at a single time and exported en mass. IF that were to be the case you would be absolutely correct. However, logistically it simply isn’t possible. The united states incarcerates more people than ALL other industrialized nations COMBINED. The implication that there isn’t and couldn’t be infrastructure to handle the problem as a continuing function of time is bologna. I agree that a way to ease the burden, on many levels, is to grant amnesty to SOME of those illegals here. But it cannot be argued that a significant criminal element exists embedded in this issue. And did you think that the granting of that amnesty was going to be free? Your allusion about death/internment camps is sensationalistic hogwash incidently. I think your idea that anyone wishing to stay should be given quasi-citizenship and pay taxes has merit. But wanting to come here for jobs is not an excuse. We don’t have enough jobs for our own citizens(the why of that is for another day) so why should we be expected to provide jobs for people that aren’t even citizens? You act like that reason makes it alright. It isn’t alright. As I said, to gain citizenship in another country you have to show that you bring something to the table. Why should it be any different here? And the law that was enacted in AZ is basically a paraphrase of the federal law that isn’t being enforced. So if the AZ law is racist/facist (or whatever inflammatory descriptor you’d like to insert here) then it was always so. Why the indignation now? The sense of entitlement displayed by people over this issue is simply mind boggling. Illegal is illegal and if the shoe was on the other foot we’d be in jail. Check out how Mexico treats illegals from south of their border. Look it up.
Wow, that was fast. You’ve already changed your mind. First you said the government should simply follow the law, which calls for immediate deportation. But now you’re saying, eh, the undocumented folks wouldn’t have to be deported all it once and some of them could have guest worker status.
It’s indisputable that deportation of so many people, which you said was the solution, would require building camps, but I’ll grant you that my calling them “concentration camps” — though literally correct — was a poor choice of words because it conjures up Nazi death camps, which is improper in this context. But call them “happy fun camps” or whatever, mass deportations would require building huge facilities where families would stay indefinitely while they were being processed.
I agree that the Arizona law is unnecessary, but you’d have to cite where in federal law it says it’s okay for cops to interrogate people based on their skin tone or foreign appearance.
What’s really going on here is as simple as it is cynical. This is politics. Jan Brewer wants to ensure that she gets elected in November, as do the Republican pols in the Arizona legislature who crafted this nasty, un-American law. They know it’s unconstitutional but figure, rightly, that it won’t be overturned until after they’ve delivered a landslide election for their party in November. They are short-sighted, however, because it will be overturned by 2012 and will undoubtedly provide a shot in the arm for the Democrats in that election and every successive election in Arizona to come. Latinos in this country, most of whose families have been U.S. citizens for decades and longer, know racism when they see it, and — as has happened here in California — they won’t forget this. Ever.
I said very clearly that they don’t pay their share of taxes, but they do pay taxes. Here are multiple sources:
Check out CNN today on the Arizona rancher who was killed by illegals. His wife wrote to congress in February begging for help in controlling the illegals who invade their ranch. She wrote that they were the victims and there are views of the mess left behind on their ranch by the invaders.
I have two friends who were in an accident with an illegal driver. Both illegal drivers ran from the accidents.
Illegals share my rights, unrightfully so, and we also share hospital emergency rooms. This is simply a problem that needs solving. And the American economy could use some legal immigrants. Frustration breeds bad actions and laws. Congress needs to do something and quit screwing around. Vote yes to legal pot.
1 unbiased tone of voice about Msnbc in the Television show. He features a definitely tough immigration plan. The master managed to graduate around the Harvard University. At present he provides the a single Radio Show. He don’t just like that Us president.
The Republicans are so funny, when the economy is good you say let’s all celebrate “Cinco de Mayo, my brothers” but when the economy is down “it’s all your fault, you damn immigrant”. When most Americans (with Latin America roots) go to the polls this November we will remember that the GOP has gone on a nationwide rant in proposing and passing several anti-immigration legislation and have continue to blame us for the flat economy or worse. We will remember who stands with us and who stands against us, so trying to stop it now is somewhat funny, but go ahead, you will not change our minds. You hate made you do it, in November; you will reap what you have sown.
Benito, the pride of Palomar Community College.