AZ SB1070 and HB2281

[bailadora]

How 'bout them Arizonians? Been quite the controversy of late, hasn't it? Without starting a GB style slugfest, I'd be interested to see what my fellow HT'ers think of all the happenings.

 

[newideas]

I think its a state law enforcing the federal border.

When I get pulled over and asked for my license because you have to have one to drive I don't get pissed and sue because I look like I should have a drivers license or because I think he assumes I don't have one and I do. You CAN be arrested in tx for not having I'd it is a law here and getting I D is simple if you're a citizen.

In my head az is saying you need papers or citizen ship to legally visit this state. If people would be less racially sensitive it would blow over. I don't get mad if people say english are stiff and germans are beer drinking war mongers. I'm was born here live here have roots here and bfd if you have to say look I belong. Even if you don't have papers they can (and would) look you up before hauling you to jail unless you go howard gates and get defiant. Leave al sharpton and jesse jackson to cry racism and everyone else needs to live their life.

 

[emap]

It is an attempt to cover up the fact that they can't stop the drug smugglers who are creating problems and killing people. The people who run illegals into Arizona do kill people, about one a decade or less.

I have never come across an illegal who does not work their ass off, the problem are the people who are born here who do not work their ass off instead they milch off the state or their parents and buy drugs.

 

[newideas]

It is an attempt to cover up the fact that they can't stop the drug smugglers who are creating problems and killing people. The people who run illegals into Arizona do kill people, about one a decade or less.

I have never come across an illegal who does not work their ass off, the problem are the people who are born here who do not work their ass off instead they milch off the state or their parents and buy drugs.

I agree in part. I don't buy the conspiracy. Liberals are saying states don't have a right to enforce citizenshipstatus but az says they are tired of fed govt doing nothing

As a texan I've worked with illegals and they work hard 90 percent or more are good people. Which I believe is the same for all colors butthe 10 fuck it up for the rest of everyone.

No one in the law opposes good honets hard work but crossing illegally isn't honest. Imsure the papers are expensive but well no but its just true.

That said economically they are just a labor force and contribute little financially. Many eat for free at work and share apts btwn many people. Food is not expensive if you shop smart at the supermercado (bad spanish prolly misspelled

 

[bailadora]

Food is not expensive if you shop smart at the supermercado (bad spanish prolly misspelled

Actually, you spelled that correctly.

 

[niv78]

I personally believe we should be setting up centers that are easy to find and easy for immigrants to learn about to help make them citizens. The more citizens we have the more money we earn from taxes.

 

[newideas]

I personally believe we should be setting up centers that are easy to find and easy for immigrants to learn about to help make them citizens. The more citizens we have the more money we earn from taxes.

If you mean POTENTIAL taxes. But many families who have migrant or day labor workers won't make enough money and be qualified for entitlements. Half of the US pays no or a negative tax rate. Could you live on 12 a year. That's minwage, let alone you and your 4 ninos. Don't deny many people of hispanic (catholic) descent have larger familes.

And mormons.

*not PC

 

[SweetErika]

Yep, poorer people usually end up being a net drain on the system by using more services and paying relatively little in taxes.

Illegal immigrants already pay sales taxes while they're here, and even if they gain citizenship, they're more likely to be lower wage earners, so we won't necessarily bring in more tax revenue by adding them as citizens. What we would do is put a greater strain on systems like public education and health care because as citizens, they'd be even more likely to use those services.

Bailadora, I'm not sure how I feel about the bills. I can see where they're problematic, but I also believe in obeying and enforcing our laws and having a stricter immigration policy (for everyone, of course). Now that the law is passed, I'll be interested to see how it goes and hoping it'll be modified or repealed if it's abused.

 

[midwestyankee]

Seems to me the problem is not that too many Mexican transient laborers get in here to work. The problem is that they can't easily get back to Mexico when the seasonal work has been completed. This has been the case since Ronald Reagan's administration overhauled the immigration policies to suit the sensibilities of whites living in the southwest.

If it were possible to get short-term work visas, far fewer Mexican laborers would sneak in. They just want to work in a stronger economy. What's wrong with that? As to those who claim that illegal workers unfairly compete with Americans by accepting work at lower wages, there's plenty of research to disprove this notion. More accurately, the wages of illegal workers are being held down.

It's true, as Erika pointed out, that poor people tend to be net users of public services. But this has always been the case, going back to the waves of lower class European immigrants during the nineteenth century. What happens is that over time, people in those populations tend to assimilate and move up the economic ladder. This has already begun to happen in the Hispanic community but it's far easier to complain about those who are different than us than it is to recognize the reality of their advances in recent decades.

My take on the new Arizona law is that it stinks. If the legislature want to treat their problem in a fair way, the law would have required the police to check for the legal residency of all people with whom they made contact in the process of enforcing other laws. But such a law would never have passed because the white community would have been offended to be treated in such a way. But apparently it's okay to treat all Hispanics as if they were illegally in the country.

In America we have worked for the better part of two centuries to create a climate where all people are treated equally under the law, as "guaranteed" in the Constitution. Apparently Arizona's copy of the memo got lost in cyberspace.

 

[bambikiller]

Let
Me See If I Got This
Right.


If
You Cross The North Korean Border Illegally You Get 12
Years Hard Labor.

If
You Cross The Iranian Border Illegally You Are Detained
Indefinitely.

If
You Cross The Afghan Border Illegally, You Get
Shot.

If
You Cross The Saudi Arabian Border Illegally You Will Be
Jailed.

If You Cross The
Chinese Border Illegally You May Never Be Heard From
Again.

If
You Cross The Venezuelan Border Illegally You Will Be
Branded A Spy And Your Fate Will Be
Sealed.

If
You Cross The Cuban Border Illegally You Will Be
Thrown Into Political Prison To Rot.


If
You Cross The U.s. Border
Illegally You
Get


A
Job,
A
Drivers License,
Social
Security Card,
Welfare,

Food
Stamps,
Credit
Cards,
Subsidized
Rent Or A Loan To Buy A House,

Free
Education,
Free
Health Care,
A
Lobbyist In Washington

Billions
Of Dollars Worth Of Public Documents Printed In Your
Language
The
Right To Carry Your Country's Flag While You Protest
That You Don't Get Enough Respect

And,
In Many Instances, You Can Vote.




I
Just Wanted To Make Sure I Had A Firm Grasp On The
Situation

 

[midwestyankee]

Let
Me See If I Got This
Right.


If
You Cross The North Korean Border Illegally You Get 12
Years Hard Labor.

If
You Cross The Iranian Border Illegally You Are Detained
Indefinitely.

If
You Cross The Afghan Border Illegally, You Get
Shot.

If
You Cross The Saudi Arabian Border Illegally You Will Be
Jailed.

If You Cross The
Chinese Border Illegally You May Never Be Heard From
Again.

If
You Cross The Venezuelan Border Illegally You Will Be
Branded A Spy And Your Fate Will Be
Sealed.

If
You Cross The Cuban Border Illegally You Will Be
Thrown Into Political Prison To Rot.


If
You Cross The U.s. Border
Illegally You
Get


A
Job,
A
Drivers License,
Social
Security Card,
Welfare,

Food
Stamps,
Credit
Cards,
Subsidized
Rent Or A Loan To Buy A House,

Free
Education,
Free
Health Care,
A
Lobbyist In Washington

Billions
Of Dollars Worth Of Public Documents Printed In Your
Language
The
Right To Carry Your Country's Flag While You Protest
That You Don't Get Enough Respect

And,
In Many Instances, You Can Vote.




I
Just Wanted To Make Sure I Had A Firm Grasp On The
Situation

So you've proven that you can cut and paste from your email.

Now, how about thinking for yourself?

Does it matter to you at all that this diatribe is not logical and that it contains gross misrepresentations and exaggerations of the truth?

 

[subwannabe]

From what I understand the AZ law mirrrors laws already on the books at the federal level. I think the liberals are making way to big of a deal over this. They are saying that the law allows police to stop anyone to see if they are here legally or not, therefore setting up race profiling. From what I understand, the law does not actually do this. In most cases I really don't see the police going out and searching for Mexicans and checking their papers. Sure, you might have loner idiot policepersons who have their own agenda outside the law but that can already happen anyway whether they passed a new law or not.

 

[bambikiller]

Yeah I learned to cut and paste but it's not that inaccurate.

How's this.
They are illegle alliens what part of the illegle part don't you understand.

We all have relatives that came from some other place but most of them came here legally.

It is illegal to enter any other country with out a visa, why should we not export them back.

It's the law.

 

[midwestyankee]

Yeah I learned to cut and paste but it's not that inaccurate.

How's this.
They are illegle alliens what part of the illegle part don't you understand.

We all have relatives that came from some other place but most of them came here legally.

It is illegal to enter any other country with out a visa, why should we not export them back.

It's the law.

You may have missed the point of the thread, which was to discuss the Arizona law recently enacted. No one here is denying that illegal immigration is illegal. We just want to talk about what practical methods might exist for containing the situation and improving on the status quo.

Any pertinent thoughts?

 

[culloden]

I think the AZ law makes sense. It doesn't allow the police to stop people on suspicion of being illegal. It only allows them to ask for proof of legal residency if contact has been initiated for other reasons - a traffic stop, or an arrest for a crime.

 

[midwestyankee]

I think the AZ law makes sense. It doesn't allow the police to stop people on suspicion of being illegal. It only allows them to ask for proof of legal residency if contact has been initiated for other reasons - a traffic stop, or an arrest for a crime.

My problem with the law is that it's essentially unAmerican. This law puts the police in the position of assuming that people are guilty of a crime (illegal residency) before proof. Because any Arizonan can report a police officer for failing to do his job with respect to enforcing this law, the police will almost certainly be checking as many people as possible for their residency in order to protect their jobs. Whether you look Hispanic or have a surname that some policeman thinks is Hispanic (i.e., Mexican in their case), you'd better be carrying incontrovertible proof of your citizenship. Most people don't like to carry their passports around all the time because of all the hassle and delay involved in replacing it. The law simply invites racial profiling.

My guess is that 99% of the people who see this law in a favorable light can not imagine themselves being caught up in it. It's really easy to applaud a law that only applies to "those people."

 

[Denae]

Seems to me the problem is not that too many Mexican transient laborers get in here to work. The problem is that they can't easily get back to Mexico when the seasonal work has been completed. This has been the case since Ronald Reagan's administration overhauled the immigration policies to suit the sensibilities of whites living in the southwest.

If it were possible to get short-term work visas, far fewer Mexican laborers would sneak in. They just want to work in a stronger economy. What's wrong with that? As to those who claim that illegal workers unfairly compete with Americans by accepting work at lower wages, there's plenty of research to disprove this notion. More accurately, the wages of illegal workers are being held down.

It's true, as Erika pointed out, that poor people tend to be net users of public services. But this has always been the case, going back to the waves of lower class European immigrants during the nineteenth century. What happens is that over time, people in those populations tend to assimilate and move up the economic ladder. This has already begun to happen in the Hispanic community but it's far easier to complain about those who are different than us than it is to recognize the reality of their advances in recent decades.

My take on the new Arizona law is that it stinks. If the legislature want to treat their problem in a fair way, the law would have required the police to check for the legal residency of all people with whom they made contact in the process of enforcing other laws. But such a law would never have passed because the white community would have been offended to be treated in such a way. But apparently it's okay to treat all Hispanics as if they were illegally in the country.
In America we have worked for the better part of two centuries to create a climate where all people are treated equally under the law, as "guaranteed" in the Constitution. Apparently Arizona's copy of the memo got lost in cyberspace.

As a white Arizonan, I think this new law stinks to high heaven. Yes, something needs to be done to stop the illegalimmigration and the coyotes who take advantage of those trying coming into this country. The border is not secure and the border agents take their lives in their hands every day the minute they walk on the job.

I don't understand non-minority Americans who don't realize how potentially egregious this new law is. It (the new law) offends me to my core and I can only hope that it is modified at the very least.

 

[Denae]

How many of us have grumbled at the inconveniences we've experienced at airports since September 11th?

If you're Hispanic (using that for simplicity purposes) you're going to have to think about carrying identification anywhere and everywhere you go in Arizona. You never know when you'll be questioned. You could be walking in your neighborhood, you could be jogging at the high school, you could be at a friend's house...you didn't do anything wrong, but you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and you look like a suspect to another crime.

Do you really think that police officers will check the proof of citizenship for everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, who they come into contact with every day?

I'm not attacking our law enforcement personnel. Their job is hard enough as it is.

If illegal immigration is a federal crime, why isn't the federal government doing more about it? Maybe they will now by investigating this law, which I believe I saw a blurb about today in the media.

I just want to scream. We take our rights in this country for granted.

 

[silverwhisper]

well said, denae. nice to see you again, btw. :>

ed

 

[bailadora]

Hey all... just stopping in to say thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts so far. I am watching the discusssion and will post my thoughts as soon as I get some time to sit and type it out. 'Cause, um yeah - it's gonna take awhile.

 

[culloden]

If illegal immigration is a federal crime, why isn't the federal government doing more about it?

That is exactly the question. And the reason is simply politics. I think a big reason behind the AZ law is an attempt to goad the Feds into doing their job.

 

[midwestyankee]

Everything I read out of Arizona from the folks who created this law says that their intent was to try to do something to stem the violence at and around the border. Since most of that violence seems to be related to the drug traffic, you'd think that the legislature's response would clearly target drug traffickers. But it doesn't in any way directly target the drug trade at all.

So my question is this: is the "we're going after the drug-related violence" the real motive, in which case you have to ask how stupid is the legislature that created a bill so clearly ineffective against drug dealers or is it a cover-up for sheer racism and anti-immigration hatred?

 

[fettpett1]

here is a link to the actual law: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

It reinforces Federal Law, they have to have probable cause to arrest someone, and they have to make every attempt possible to determine legal status. It's getting a bad rape for being something it's not.

 

[emap]

midwest I actually talked about it, it is a cover up but not for what you asked, they are saying here look see we are trying without actually trying. McCain has started a campaign to get the fence finished, seen a commercial for it a couple times. The problem is it is all just a smokescreen, for the last decade it has been known they have tunnels finding said tunnels is not easy. If they were given some expensive tools they could find the tunnels and actually do something about the drugs being smuggled in and reduce alot of the problem.

Not that anyone says hey let's spend the money on something that will work, instead it is let's look at the surface and see if we can make that go away. I honestly think that at least some of congress has been bought by the cartel, I mean dang if they buy one of the scanners that paleontologists use they lose something like 3 million and cost the cartels 50 million a year.

 

[bailadora]

I think the AZ law makes sense. It doesn't allow the police to stop people on suspicion of being illegal. It only allows them to ask for proof of legal residency if contact has been initiated for other reasons - a traffic stop, or an arrest for a crime.

Not necessarily. As written the law says:

For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state or a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state...

In an interview with NPR, Tuscon Police Chief Roberto Villasenor said

Well, I think it says that you can't use race or ethnicity solely as the means of making that determination. I think that there will be an element of that that's looked at. And I think where a lot of people are getting confused is those instances where we stop someone for a criminal violation, we have some reason for that stop and that contact, but I don't believe that's what we're talking about in regard to this law.

This law is talking about in the course of any legal contact, as well as when we talk to a witness of a crime or when we talk to a victim of a crime. Those are legal contacts of law enforcement. Now we look at it in the context of those legal contacts.

If in the course of them, we develop reasonable suspicion that the individual we're talking with is illegally in the country, we are mandated to take enforcement action. That's where the questions are coming up is how do you develop that reasonable suspicion that they're in the country illegally if they're there talking to you just about being a victim of a crime. [All Things Considered, 4/26/10]

Full article found here.

I've been doing some research on what constitutes "reasonable suspicion". The clearest definition I could find was this one from Wikipediea: Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard in United States law that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity based on specific and articulable facts and inferences.

So then I got to wondering what is meant by "specific and articuable facts" and as near as I can tell, it means that something about a person's characteristics or behavior lead the law enforcement official to believe the person was, is or is about to be engaged in a specific criminal activity. That right there begs the question as to what specific characteristics or behaviors are linked to the specific crime of illegal resident status.

Do you really think that police officers will check the proof of citizenship for everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, who they come into contact with every day?

Exactly. When I suggested on another forum, as MWY did here, that the only way to treat everyone in a equitable manner would be for law enforcement to ask each individual for proof of legal residency, someone sputtered, "But...but...but that would move us towards a police state, and how sad would that be?" To which, I replied, "Yeah, it would be sad, but if security has become the higher priority than freedom, then I think it only reasonable that everyone be subject to the same scrutiny. The 14th amendment says all legal US citizens are entitled to equal protection (ie treatment) under the law, so if some Americans are willing to sacrifice the rights of others in the name of security, they'd better damn well be willing to sacrifice those same rights themselves."

I'm not attacking our law enforcement personnel. Their job is hard enough as it is.

Agreed.

So my question is this: is the "we're going after the drug-related violence" the real motive, in which case you have to ask how stupid is the legislature that created a bill so clearly ineffective against drug dealers or is it a cover-up for sheer racism and anti-immigration hatred?

One has to wonder Yank, especially with the passage of HB2281, the ban on "ethnic" studies coming so close upon the heels of SB1070. I have a whole lot to say about *that* particular bill, but my free time has expired for today.


Again, thanks to everyone for the discussion so far. Even if we don't agree with one another, it's nice to see HT'ers can keep it civilized.