Thoughts on AZ Immigration Bill

My family spent a week in Arizona earlier this month. My father-in-law and step-mother-in-law live in the desert outside of Phoenix, and we love visiting them there. (Ok, as someone who spent every winter of her childhood in Scottsdale from 1981-1986, I love any excuse to go back to Arizona. In any case, while there, an earlier version of the the now-passed immigration bill was being discussed on local television. From what we heard about it, we thought it sounded like great piece of legislation.
Over the past few days, we’ve watched as protesters for and against illegal immigrants have took to the streets over this bill. So I decided to dig deeper in an effort to educate myself on what this bill is – and is not.
Here’s what I’ve found:

• This legislation is not a new series of laws. It is a series of addendums to laws already in force in the state.
• This legislation does not make illegal any action or inaction that is not already illegal because of Federal statutes.
• My interpretation (which I’ve found substantiation for from legal experts far more learned than I) of this legislation is that it simply says that state and local law enforcement officers in Arizona are being empowered by the state legislature to detect aliens who are in this country illegally when they have already been contacted on suspicion of another illegality, and if the situation warrants, cooperate with Federal agents for detention, punishment and deportation as necessary.

Some myths that need to be busted:

• MYTH: This new immigration law is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, because it demands that aliens register with the governments and carry their legal documentation with them at all times. (Hold on. I have to laugh hysterically before I respond to this.) The requirement for aliens to register with the government and carry their legal documentation with them at all times stems from and 8 US Code 1302(a) and (b) and 8 US Code 1304(e). Federal laws, in other words. In practical application, this is no different from a requirement to carry a passport with you when you travel overseas, or a driver’s license with you when you operate a motor vehicle. Check out the Federal statutes’ language:

(a) It shall be the duty of every alien now or hereafter in the United States, who
(1) is fourteen years of age or older,
(2) has not been registered and fingerprinted under section 1201(b) of this title or section 30 or 31 of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, and
(3) remains in the United States for thirty days or longer, to apply for registration and to be fingerprinted before the expiration of such thirty days.

(b) It shall be the duty of every parent or legal guardian of any alien now or hereafter in the United States, who
(1) is less than fourteen years of age,
(2) has not been registered under section 1201(b)of this title or section 30 or 31 of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, and
(3) remains in the United States for thirty days or longer, to apply for the registration of such alien before the expiration of such thirty days. Whenever any alien attains his fourteenth birthday in the United States he shall, within thirty days thereafter, apply in person for registration and to be fingerprinted.

8 US Code 1304(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties
Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

• Myth: This law allows police officers to willfully discriminate against people, and arrest them, because of how they look.
  (Sorry. I’m laughing again. Always amazes me how many people have *no idea* of what goes on in law enforcement.) This myth is just plain silly. Here are quotes from the bill, and my interpretations:

E. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, WITHOUT A WARRANT, MAY 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 UNITED STATES.

LEOs make arrests all the time without a warrant and based solely on probable cause. A vast majority of these arrests are never challenged. Those that are are upheld, again, a vast majority of the time, because “probable cause” is a fairly fluid construct that is based upon an officer’s good judgment based upon just the facts at hand, and is generally only overturned if overt discrimination or gross misuse of judgment can be proven. As I said above, that doesn’t often happen.

E. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, A PEACE OFFICER MAY LAWFULLY STOP ANY PERSON WHO IS OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE IF THE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE SUSPICION TO BELIEVE THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF ANY CIVIL TRAFFIC LAW AND
THIS SECTION.

My hunch is that this section is the one the protesters are most often referring to when they blast off about racial profiling. What’s interesting is that this is an addendum to an Arizona law that has to do with human smuggling. In other words, the “target” of this section wouldn’t be the illegal alien, necessarily, but the person who is sneaking them in. Still think they’re going to get stopped for being brown?
Many parts of the remainder of the bill pertain to it being illegal to employ illegal aliens, and it being illegal for illegal aliens to seek work. And the problem here is…? In most cases, the 2010 legislation makes only minor addendums to law already in force in the case of illegal alien employment. The bill also very deliberately lays out defenses to prosecution based upon entrapment, while also specifying that an employer can only be held culpable if they KNOWINGLY employ an illegal alien.
Some final thoughts, based upon my observations of the reactions of others:

1. Many people have no idea of (a) normal and legal law enforcement practices, (b) what racial profile actually means and entails, and (c) what laws pertaining to illegal aliens already exist and are in force.
2. “Undocumented alien” is beyond a misnomer. These folks are “ILLEGAL aliens” who have willfully broken the laws of the United States of America. This is a slap in the face to millions of Americans who have immigrated to the United States LEGALLY and with no small expenditure of time and effort.
3. Advocating a broad amnesty bill simply because various government agencies have thrown up their hands and said that they can’t possibly put 12 million people on busses and send them home is asinine. Not doing anything is unacceptable. Giving a free pass is unacceptable. Let’s start by actually empowering LEOs throughout the country to enforce the immigration laws of our land rather than tying their hands through bureaucracies and hypocrisies.

What do you all think?

Taking On Immigration

(Post Transferred from my formerly stand-alone blog, Tiffany Takes On.)

(cross-posted to TiffanyAller.Blogspot.com and ArsCompendium.com)

I would like to share the following portion of a famous political speech. Please read through the speech instead of succumbing to the urge to skip to the bottom, where I've posted the author/bibliographic information.


(1 Comment Transferred; original posting date 11/27/07, 6:45 PM.)

Jude's BlogLoggin said...

You know this is most well thought out post on the illegal problem this country has. I really like your blog. December 8, 2007 7:49 PM

"Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members of the community. But there should be a comprehensive law enacted with the object of working a threefold improvement over our present system. First, we should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic societies, but also all persons who are of a low moral tendency or of unsavory reputation. This means that we should require a more thorough system of inspection abroad and a more rigid system of examination at our immigration ports, the former being especially necessary.

The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an American living and enough money to insure a decent start under American conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting competition which gives rise to so much of bitterness in American industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations have their greatest possibility of growth.

Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and social. A very close supervision should be exercised over the steamship companies which mainly bring over the immigrants, and they should be held to a strict accountability for any infraction of the law."

I would like to state that I think that the author of this speech is a very wise and prescient man. And no, I am not of an anti-immigrant mind; rather, I'm against:

• any person who enters this great nation illicitly;
• any so-called "illegal immigrant" (why don't we simply call them "illegal") who takes and takes and takes from the resources of our land without any effort to give back;
• or any legal and able-minded citizen who does not actively seek to better himself and his nation.

Who is this orator, you ask?

None other than President Theodore Roosevelt, in his "First Annual Message" (a precursor to the State of the Union address) given on December 3rd, 1901. Read the speech in its entirety at The American Presidency Project.

What do you think?