Is This The Right Law at The Right Time in The Right Place

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Bob K
Member Elite

since 2007-11-03

Posts 4208

0 posted 2010-04-25 04:43 PM

     Yesterday Governor Brewer of Arizona, in a televised news conference signed a bill into law that compels police to demand papers from anybody who looks like an illegal immigrant.  I offer you an article from The Washington Post with details:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042301250.html

     My thinking is that the Arizona legislature has decided that the issue needs to be dealt with right now and has grown impatient with the national consensus that the discussion is a difficult one for the Republican Party.  Ronald Reagan offered amnesty to  millions of illegals in the 80's, but the party has fled from that position in recent years.  It wants to tap the recent Hispanic votes, hence President Bush's emphasis on speaking Spanish and his efforts to establishing some sort of guest worker programs.  The party has scampered even further to the right, however, since that time, and now has been hijacked by very right wing folks who presented this legislation to Governor Brewer as a fait accompli, which she had to sign.  She did so in a grand public show.

     The problem is that it appears to be unenforceable without use of racial profiling, which is illegal for the police to use.

     Enforcement of the law puts the police in an impossible position.

     What you you think we should do, and why?

[This message has been edited by Bob K (04-26-2010 02:57 AM).]

Bob K
Member Elite

since 2007-11-03

Posts 4208

1 posted 2010-04-26 03:10 AM

     Police, if they attempt to enforce the law, risk being in violation of the anti-profiling statutes.  I have heard police express unhappiness about this.  If police fail to enforce the new Arizona law, they are at risk from the folks in their own legislature, which has ordered them to identify those who appear to be illegal immigrants.

     The only solution that I heard suggested which sounded legal to me was one that was pretty much absurd, that officers ask everybody for their papers.  This requires that everybody in the Arizona or who crosses into the state of Arizona have Arizona approved papers on their person that prove their citizenship.

     I have a Passport, but I really don't like the thought of carrying a Passport around with me for identification in my own country.  It feels a bit too much like all those old world war II movies where the Gestapo is always asking to see your Documents.

     If I understand the law, as written, you can be jailed if you don't cough them up.  Perhaps somebody can correct me on this.

Bob K
Member Elite

since 2007-11-03

Posts 4208

2 posted 2010-04-28 04:23 PM

I notice that the subject has come up in another thread but not here. Why is that?

Sunshine

Administrator

Member Empyrean

since 1999-06-25

Posts 63354
Listening to every heart

3 posted 2010-04-28 09:33 PM

I looked at this thread first, Bob, so I'll go ahead and not opine to offer a solution or answer, but to say just this....

I am an American citizen. I have a Passport that I would use in any country asking for one. To my recent knowledge, it is almost illegal NOT to travel without one. IF this country now has to subject itself to asking for a proper passport, I am prepared.

So, my question back to you: what's the problem with providing insurance of your allegiance?

Thank you.

Bob K
Member Elite

since 2007-11-03

Posts 4208

4 posted 2010-04-29 05:46 PM

The Southern Poverty Law Center says:

quote:

Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was written by a lawyer at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. The law, a recipe for racial profiling, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.
Kris Kobach, the author of the Arizona law and a lawyer at FAIR’s Immigration Reform Law Institute, has been the prime mover behind numerous ordinances that seek to punish those who aid and abet “illegal aliens,” including laws adopted in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, and Hazelton, Pa.
The laws have not done well and have cost some localities immense sums of money to defend. Recently, the city of Albertville, Ala., refused to work with Kobach on just such an ordinance, reportedly because of the high legal costs incurred by these other communities.
Before joining FAIR, Kobach served as U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top immigration adviser. He then moved on to take charge of Department of Justice efforts to tighten border security after the 9/11 attacks. There, he developed a program — the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System — that called for close monitoring of men from Arab and Muslim nations, even legal U.S. residents. The program collapsed due to complaints of racial profiling and discrimination.

A close reading of the article gives information about the background of the Founder of FAIR, and it’s roots in the Eugenics movement and in Holocaust denial. It also goes on to talk about the bill’s sponsor in the Arizona Senate.

quote:

The principal sponsor of the Arizona law, state Sen. Russell Pearce, has his own history of hate. In 2006, Pearce forwarded an email to his supporters from the neo-Nazi National Alliance titled “Who Rules America?” The article criticized the media for promoting multiculturalism and racial equality, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact. More recently, Pearce has been photographed hugging J.T. Ready, a Phoenix-area resident who is a member of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/04/28/hate-group-lawyer-drafted-arizona-anti-immigrant-law/#more-4065
     The 2007 article, after which FAIR was added to the SPLC’slist of hate groups is referenced below.  It made disturbing reading for me.  I don’t know what effect it will have on you.  To my mind it seems reasonably clear where this organization and where this particular bill are coming from and what the purpose actually is.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2007/winter/the-teflon-nativists

     Beyond that, where in the bill does it say anything about proving your allegiance?  And what does allegiance have to do with citizenship?  People can have allegiance to money, faith, family, party, love and country; and as history has shown, the country may or may not be the one of which they are a citizen.  This is simply another reason to intrude on people's liberty to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

     Do you look loyal?  How can you tell?  And how's a policeman supposed to measure that?  Does he carry a sincere-o-meter.  And if President Obama declared this to be law as an executive order, how would you feel about it?

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