With a few strokes of her pen, Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer has turned Arizona into the only state in the country where Americans can be arrested for not carrying documented proof of citizenship status:
The law, which will take effect in 90 days, will make it a state crime to be in the country illegally. The measure would require migrants to produce papers verifying their status when asked to do so by a police officer, according to a story in The Arizona Republic.
What neither the USA Today piece nor the one in the Arizona Republic say, however, is that immigrants do not walk around wearing signs that say “I was not born in the United States but I’m here legally,” or “My grandfather immigrated here from Mexico –or the Dominican Republic, or Spain, or Italy, or Greece, or Portugal — and that’s why I have this dark skin and this dark hair, but my parents were born in this country and so was I,” or “I was smuggled across the border and I’m here illegally,” or “I’m just here on business from out of state,” or “I’m here with my family to see the Grand Canyon.” Any fool can see that in practice this law makes it a crime to not be carrying proof of citizenship anywhere in public for anyone, for everyone, no matter who you are or what your citizenship status is.
Well, maybe not just any fool. Let’s call the roll. Cassy Fiano, guest-posting at Hot Air, first:
So we not only have Nazi rhetoric against this bill, but we have racism/civil rights rhetoric as well. Most interesting to point out, of course, is that Republicans are being blamed for fighting against the civil rights and desegregation movement. As most people with any knowledge of American history know, it was Democrats who fought against repealing slavery, Democrats who fought against desegregation, Democrats who fought against civil rights, and Democrats who kept a former leader of the KKK in their party for decades. Republicans were the ones for desegregation, the repeal of slavery, and the civil rights movement. But, as per usual from liberals, that’s gotten neatly turned onto its head in order to paint conservatives and Republicans yet again as racists.
Ed Morrissey, who might have gotten an unequivocal thumbs up for this:
Civil libertarians have already expressed objections to that kind of police intervention, and perhaps for good reason. The authority granted police seems to go beyond reasonable doubt, and how exactly police come to suspect that a person has violated immigration law is suspicious in itself.
now gets roll-called because of this exit line:
Be sure to read Cassy Fiano’s take on the bill in the Green Room.
It isn’t clear to me what, in that legislation, is controversial.
Roll call overachiever award to Donald Douglas:
No surprise that Obama’s in bed with communist open-borders extremists on this.
But it occurs to me … that there’s another clause in the Constitution that may be relevant: Article IV Section 4:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
Were I representing Arizona, I’d argue that the federal government is in default on its “protection against invasion” responsibility, and that this empowers the state to resort to self-help. Not sure how that would play out, but it would make an interesting law review article. And a fun oral argument.
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