The national outcry over Arizona’s “Show Me Your Papers” law (aka Arizona Senate Bill 1070) continues to build, and there’s been so much reaction, commentary, and news related to the law that I thought I would do a roundup.
Sarah Palin informs us that the Arizona law does not permit or allow for racial profiling, and adds that Pres. Obama is to blame for propagating the “myth” that it does:
“There is no ability or opportunity in there for the racial profiling,” she said. “Shame on the lame stream media again for turning this into something that it is not.”
Palin then blamed the president for allowing the “myth” that the law allows racial profiling to take hold.
“It’s shameful, too, that the Obama administration has allowed…this to become more of a racial issue by perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part of this law,” she said.
What is shameful is that Sarah Palin can make such assertions without explaining how a law enforcement officer determines that there is “reasonable suspicion” under Article 8, Section B of AZ SB 1070 to believe that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States”; or how that officer can, under Article 8, Section E, “arrest a person [without a warrant] 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” without using subjective criteria like physical appearance, skin color, accent, or language — i.e., racial profiling.
Andrea Nill at Think Progress reports that Ohio, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Utah, Colorado, North Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, are all planning anti-immigrant legislation along the lines of Arizona’s law — despite the fact that legal challenges against Arizona are already in the offing and calls for economic disinvestment of various kinds are coming thick and fast.
Max Fisher at AtlanticWire runs down several examples of these.
In a lengthy news analysis, Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle writes that Arizona is pushing up against a mighty wall of legal precedent for the federal government’s primacy in the area of regulating immigration:
The last time a state broadly aimed its laws at illegal immigrants, it was rebuked by a federal judge.”The state is powerless to enact its own scheme to regulate immigration,” U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer said in a ruling striking down California’s Proposition 187, a 1994 initiative that sought to deny health and welfare benefits and public schooling to the undocumented.
Pfaelzer said California voters were understandably frustrated with ineffective federal enforcement of immigration laws. But no matter how serious the problem, she said, “the authority to regulate immigration belongs exclusively to the federal government.”
[…]
Unlike those laws, the Arizona statute targets illegal immigrants themselves, not just their benefits. What’s more, said UC Davis Law Professor Vikram Amar, it imposes criminal penalties for conduct – being in the state illegally – that is not a federal crime but is only grounds for deportation.“Congress decides how it wants to enforce limits on people who are in the U.S. illegally,” Amar said Sunday.
He said the Constitution gives the federal government exclusive authority over immigration because it is a national policy that affects relations with other nations – such as Mexico, whose government has denounced the Arizona law.
In addition to Pres. Obama instructing the DOJ to research the possibility of a federal challenge, several civil liberties and/or immigrant rights organizations are planning legal challenges to AZ SB1070.
According to Karl Manheim and Erwin Chemerinsky of Loyala Law School (Los Angeles) and the University of California (Irvine), respectively, the Arizona law is a constitutional non-starter:
The Arizona law appears to be “facially unconstitutional,” Manheim said. “States have no power to pass immigration laws because it’s an attribute of foreign affairs. Just as states can’t have their own foreign policies or enter into treaties, they can’t have their own immigration laws either.”
San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, has announced a moratorium on official business trips to Arizona by city workers.
The sheriff of Pima County, Arizona — which includes Tucson — has condemned his state’s new law (he called it “racist,” “disgusting,” and “stupid”) and says he will not enforce it.
Even some Republicans are criticizing the law. Not to be too cynical, but one can understand why. Michael Gerson (a former Bush speechwriter) comes down hard against the law, despite finding the motivations behind it “understandable”:
American states have broad powers. But they are not permitted their own foreign or immigration policy. One reason is that immigration law concerns not only the treatment of illegal immigrants but also the proper treatment of American citizens. And here the Arizona law fails badly.
Under the law, police must make a “reasonable attempt” to verify the immigration status of people they encounter when there is a “reasonable suspicion” they might be illegal. Those whose citizenship can’t be verified can be arrested. But how is such reasonable suspicion aroused? The law forbids the use of race or ethnicity as the “sole” basis for questioning. So what are the other telltale indicators?
Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the law, looked flustered when asked during a news conference the obvious question of how illegal immigrants might be identified. “I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like,” Brewer replied. “I can tell you that I think that there are people in Arizona that assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I don’t know if they know that for a fact or not.” Yet Brewer has ordered Arizona police to be trained in the warning signs of illegality — signs that she cannot describe. There is a reason no Arizona official has publicly detailed these standards — because the descriptions would sound like racial stereotyping. And probably would be.
This law creates a suspect class, based in part on ethnicity, considered guilty until they prove themselves innocent. It makes it harder for illegal immigrants to live without scrutiny — but it also makes it harder for some American citizens to live without suspicion and humiliation. Americans are not accustomed to the command “Your papers, please,” however politely delivered. The distinctly American response to such a request would be “Go to hell,” and then “See you in court.”
A physician in Urbandale, Iowa, who also happens to be a Republican primary candidate in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional district, told a group of GOP activists recently that illegal immigrants should be microchipped — like pets:
Instead of building a border fence to help stem illegal immigration, the U.S. government should implant microchips into immigrants before deportation, much like what is done with pets, Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician and one of seven Republicans running in the 3rd District Congressional primary, said Monday.
While speaking at a Tama County Republican forum, Bertroche made it clear that he wasn’t joking when he suggested treating undocumented immigrants like pets.
From the Cedar Rapids Gazette:
“I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?
“That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under,” Bertroche said.
Linda Greenhouse, who covers the Supreme Court and legal issues for the New York Times, says she will not step foot in Arizona “as long as it remains a police state.”
“What,” she asks, “would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made ‘any lawful contact’ and about whom they have ‘reasonable suspicion’ that ‘the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?’ Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?”
Finally, a complaint from Neptunus Lex:
The presence of the illegal immigrant population depresses the wages of working class citizens, since undocumented aliens are typically willing to do work that the native born will not do at the wages commonly being offered. This should make them anathema for those who purport to speak for the working class, especially at a time of high unemployment.
Normalizing the status of illegal aliens – including, potentially, a fast track towards (voting) citizenship – offers those who depend upon the political support of a dependency class the opportunity for enduring access to the levers of power.
[…]
Which do you choose, between supporting the little guy and staying in power?[…]
U.S. Hispanics and Democratic lawmakers furious over Arizona’s harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants expect huge weekend rallies across the United States, piling pressure on President Barack Obama to overhaul immigration laws in this election year.[…]
Power, every time.
I have to say that I am a bit lost here on what Lex is trying to say. Who is this “dependency class”? Illegal immigrants? In what way are they “dependent”? As Lex himself points out, they are working, doing jobs few “working class citizens” want to do, or would do, at the wages offered. Seems to me that the label “dependent class” more accurately describes the businesses and individuals who hire undocumented immigrants to do those jobs. Obviously, an underground employment market that exploits workers’ fears of having their immigration status exposed hurts everyone except those who do the hiring, but the word “dependent” doesn’t seem to fit, in my view.
And about those “working class citizens”: Who are they? There are almost 47 million Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States — 15.4% of the U.S. population. I don’t know what percentage of that number are working class as opposed to lower middle class or upper middle class, or wealthy, but the opposition to this new law doesn’t align neatly with those divisions. The offensiveness of AZ SP 1070 is its racist standard for defining who is or is not likely to be an illegal immigrant. Does Lex imagine that only immigrants who are here illegally object to that?
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