{"id":310,"date":"2010-04-28T21:23:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-29T02:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2010-04-28T21:23:53","modified_gmt":"2010-04-29T02:23:53","slug":"crazing-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nathanhunstad.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/crazing-arizona\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazing Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n