Arizona and Oklahoma have been battling it out lately over which state can be the kookiest, but come on, the anti-immigrant law that Arizona has bletcherously vomited onto the national pscyhe definitely wins. It’s got it all: racial profiling, forcing people to do things they have no expertise doing, and opening cities to huge lawsuits from crazed constituents who think that they aren’t doing enough to keep the dark-hued people out. Of course, given the monumental stupidity of the law, it’s being embraced by conservatives around the country and in Minnesota as well.
The particular stupidity that gets to me is having the cops determine the immigrant status of anybody suspicious. For a second, ignore the profiling, and ignore the chilling effect that this will have when it comes to police interactions with the community at large. Because aside from that, you’ve got the main problem that determining immigration status is hard. That’s why there are immigration lawyers. Having gone through the immigration process myself (and needing to hire a lawyer to do so!), I know firsthand that determining a person’s immigration status is not easy or logical. If it takes lawyers hours of work to figure things out, what can a cop with no training on the finer points of immigration law do? Sure, you can blame ICE, the federal government, and Congress for this mess, but that doesn’t mean that Arizona, or any other state, can fix it themselves.
Hopefully, Congress will actually pass an immigration reform bill this year. It’s actually not that complicated, or even controversial for such a huge issue. Most of the reform packages floating around actually agree on the major points, such as the fact that we won’t be kicking millions of people out of the country anytime soon. A realistic reform includes:
- A path to citizenship for those already here
- Requiring the paying of back taxes
- Requiring evidence of knowledge of English
- Tightening up the border
- Simpler verification of work status
- Much stiffer penalties on businesses that hire undocumented workers
The latter one is the most important, and predictably the one most opposed by businesses that want cheap, non-union labor. Personally, I think some aspects, like requiring English, are unnecessary, but if that is what it takes to get it through Congress, then I guess that is what it takes. Notice, however, that this list has no overlap with the law passed in Arizona.
In the meantime, Arizona richly deserves every canceled convention and boycott it gets.