The Arizona Immigration Law in Perspective

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by: lightseeker
Sun Aug 22, 2010 at 10:32:20 AM CDT
It is inevitable that my most of the young ones I teach will parrot the opinions of those who love
and care for them. There is nothing sinister in this fact, it is how we all begin in life. I think it is
my purpose not to convert them to my views, but to challenge them to think through what they
believe and the real world grounds for those beliefs.
This year, the first hot button issue for one of my more curious students was the Arizona
immigration law.

I want to share the fruit of the subsequent exchange as it recapitulates the national debate rather
nicely.

He was under the impression that the Arizona law was put in place to solve a problem. He could
not understand why simply being asked for your driver's license was such a big deal.

Let's put the entire issue in perspective, as I tried to do for my student.

First, why was the law passed in the first place?

lightseeker :: The Arizona Immigration Law in Perspective
Governor Brewer in her signing speech:
Text of Gov. Brewer's speech after signing SB 1070
" Border-related violence and crime due to illegal immigration are critically important
issues to the people of our state, to my Administration and to me, as your Governor and
as a citizen.

There is no higher priority than protecting the citizens of Arizona. We cannot sacrifice
our safety to the murderous greed
of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence
compromise our quality of life.

We cannot delay while the destruction happening south of our international border creeps
its way north."

Of course the facts do not support her lies:

Border States Deal With More Illegal Immigrant Crime Than Most, Data Suggest
FBI statistics show California and Texas had a violent crime average slightly higher than
the national average 2008, while Arizona's average was slightly lower.
 Jessica Vaughan, a co-author of the Center for Immigration Studies report and policy
director at the think tank, said the bottom line is that connections between illegal
immigrants and crime are hard to draw.

"We didn't find any evidence to support the idea that either immigrants are more prone to
crime or less prone to crime than ... legally resident Americans," she said. "It's very
tricky."

Vaughan said part of the problem is that no federal database keeps a dependable count of
how many illegal immigrants are convicted of crimes. Federal prison data, for instance,
breaks out non-citizens in its data, but that covers several groups and not just illegal
immigrants.

This is Fox Noise we are quoting here and this is the best they can do. They go on to suggest
some vague statistic about other crimes but that is all.

From an Arizona newspaper;

FBI Uniform Crime Reports and statistics provided by police agencies, in fact, show that
the crime rates in Nogales, Douglas, Yuma and other Arizona border towns have
remained essentially flat for the past decade, even as drug-related violence has spiraled
out of control on the other side of the international line. Statewide, rates of violent crime
also are down.

While smugglers have become more aggressive in their encounters with authorities, as
evidenced by the shooting of a Pinal County deputy on Friday, allegedly by illegal-
immigrant drug runners, they do not routinely target residents of border towns.

Let's be generous, maybe she was talking about property crimes:

Crime stats test rationale behind Arizona immigration law

According to FBI statistics, violent crimes reported in Arizona dropped by nearly 1,500
reported incidents between 2005 and 2008. Reported property crimes also fell, from
about 287,000 reported incidents to 279,000 in the same period. These decreases are
accentuated by the fact that Arizona's population grew by 600,000 between 2005 and
2008.

According to the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Institute, proponents of the bill

"overlook two salient points: Crime rates have already been falling in Arizona for years
despite the presence of unauthorized immigrants, and a century's worth of research has
demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the
native-born."

Ok, maybe she and her supporters are talking about kidnappings, something they specifically
claim:

Crime stats test rationale behind Arizona immigration law

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce this week told CNN's Tony Harris that half the murders
in Phoenix are committed by unauthorized immigrants and that the city is the second in
the world in kidnappings.

A CNN Fact Check found that the senator's claim about the murders in Phoenix cannot be
proven, but he did have police statistics to back up his claims of the city's high number of
kidnappings, although its exact standing in the world is not clear.

Well, finally, a fact that supports the security lie. Except, the good Senator fails to prove that
undocumented aliens are disproportionately involved in this epidemic of kidnappings. When this
has been pointed out, the only response has the sound of crickets chirping in the background.

Let's try again to discover the "problem" the governor wants to solve. We will continue to ignore
the fact that the governor seems to have found this issue as a consequence of her dismal chances
for re-election:

It is also an election year, and crime and illegal immigration - and especially forging a
link between the two - remain a potent boost for any campaign. Gov. Jan Brewer's
popularity, once in question over promoting a sales tax increase, surged after signing the
immigration bill, which is known as SB 1070 but officially called the Support Our Law
Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.

Maybe the problem the good governor and the Senator want to solve is the pervasive one that
asserts "illegals are sponging off of us taxpayers". Many average citizens presume this to be so
and the right-wingers take it as Gospel.

The facts:

Illegal Immigrants are Paying a Lot More Taxes Than You Think
One might have imagined that those fearing deportation or confronting the prospect of
paying for their safety net through their own meager wages would take a pass on the IRS'
scheme. Not so. Close to 8 million of the 12 million or so illegal aliens in the country
today file personal income taxes using these numbers, contributing billions to federal
coffers. No doubt they hope that this will one day help them acquire legal status - a
plaintive expression of their desire to play by the rules and come out of the shadows.

What's more, aliens who are not self-employed have Social Security and Medicare taxes
automatically withheld from their paychecks. Since undocumented workers have only
fake numbers, they'll never be able to collect the benefits these taxes are meant to pay for.
Last year, the revenues from these fake numbers - that the Social Security administration
stashes in the "earnings suspense file" - added up to 10 percent of the Social Security
 surplus. The file is growing, on average, by more than $50 billion a year.

Beyond federal taxes, all illegals automatically pay state sales taxes that contribute
toward the upkeep of public facilities such as roads that they use, and property taxes
through their rent that contribute toward the schooling of their children. The non-partisan
National Research Council found that when the taxes paid by the children of low-skilled
immigrant families � most of whom are illegal - are factored in, they contribute on
average $80,000 more to federal coffers than they consume.

Yes, many illegal migrants impose a strain on border communities on whose

doorstep they first arrive, broke and unemployed. To solve this problem equitably,
these communities ought to receive the surplus taxes that federal government
collects from immigrants. But the real reason border communities are strained is
the lack of a guest worker program. Such a program would match willing workers
with willing employers in advance so that they wouldn't be stuck for long periods
where they disembark while searching for jobs.

That last part is the key to what is wrong with the Arizona law. Brewer claims the immigration
process is out of control and something needs to be done. She is right about that, but the question
is , what?

The law as written and enforced invites discrimination, but does nothing to make Arizona safer.

What does the Arizona immigration Law actually say?

The law actually requires immigration status to be determined "when practicable" if
there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is not in the U.S. legally.

"Legal contact" (or an arrest) must be made first, but a police officer can find a reason to
make legal contact about 95% of the time if he or she wants to. It could be anything from
jaywalking, to a busted tail light, speeding, a noise complaint, even a so-called "Terry
stop" just for looking suspicious. In Arizona it is illegal to accept or solicit
work from someone in a vehicle, so just talking to someone in a car or pick-up truck on
the side of the road could be enough. Or loitering.
So, the police can't knock down your front door and demand to see papers, but if you are
driving a vehicle or walking outside, there's pretty much always an excuse an aggressive
cop could use to stop you and ask for proof of citizenship or legal resident status.

I would add legal contact means as a witness, bystander, victim, etc. What safe guard is there for
anyone who "looks wrong" in this empty phrase???

We are forced to return to the need for comprehensive national reform.

How do you fix a broken immigration system? Part 2

What do you think of our current immigration system? How well does it work?

Ammann: [A clinical professor of law at Saint Louis University Law School, Ammann
 works as the director of SLU Legal Clinics]

Clearly there needs to be reform of the system. A more common-sense approach to

border control is one issue, but also dealing with the huge, long waits for people who are
applying to come to the country. Depending on what country you come from, there are
waits of 10, 20, 30 years to bring relatives over. The system currently splits up families
and takes too long on the legal immigration side.

.....

To answer your question generally, there needs to be common-sense border control. We

need a more efficient system for people that apply for citizenship and asylum and refugee
status and all the different ways you can come into the country. And then ultimately we
need to do something about the people who are here undocumented.

Clearly we need to do something about where some members of a family have

documentation and are here legally and others aren't. The people who say, 'well, if they're
here illegally, we should just send them home,' the person who's here illegally might be
the mother of three kids and the three kids might be U.S. citizens. So are you gonna send
the mom home and put the three kids in foster care? It doesn't make any sense. The
people who think it's a black and white issue, the people who say things like 'what part of
illegal don't you understand?' they're the ones who don't understand because it can't be a
zero tolerance system.

This is firmly underscored by the fact that the problem is partially of our own creation. The US
(we, us) help to create the immigrant flows we now decry by our policies.

See NAFTA -

Frontline- World
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994, with the
promise of thousands of new jobs, invigorated trade in North America and the
transforming of Mexico into a manufacturing powerhouse. But the results have been
mixed, experts say. NAFTA has facilitated the free movement of capital and goods,
tripling trade between Mexico, the United States and Canada. But it has also had a
devastating effect on employment in Mexico, particularly within the agricultural sector
because the flood of subsidized food imports from the United States has resulted in
plummeting prices. As a result, millions of Mexican farmworkers are now unemployed --
and record numbers of migrants are crossing the border into the United States to seek
work.

See here on the nasty wars we helped create and fund in the 80;s ;

Central Americans and Asylum Policy in the Reagan Era

In El Salvador and Guatemala, civil war had been years in the making, as oligarchies
supported by corrupt military leaders repressed large sectors of the rural population. In
 Nicaragua, the socialist revolutionary Frente Sandinista had ousted the brutal right-wing
dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. The civil war in El Salvador increased in intensity in
early 1980. Government-supported assassins gunned down Archbishop Oscar Romero at
the altar shortly after he had publicly ordered Salvadoran soldiers to stop killing civilians.
In December 1980, four US churchwomen were assassinated in El Salvador, an act of
brutality that brought the violence "home" to the US public.

The administration of President Ronald Reagan, who came to power in January 1981,
saw these civil wars as theaters in the Cold War. In both El Salvador and Guatemala, the
United States intervened on the side of those governments, which were fighting Marxist-
led popular movements. In Nicaragua, however, the United States supported the contra
rebels against the socialist Sandinista government.

During much of the early 1980s, international human rights organizations (such as
Amnesty International and Americas Watch - later part of Human Rights Watch)
regularly reported high levels of repression in El Salvador and Guatemala, with the vast
majority of human rights violations committed by military and government-supported
paramilitary forces.

In El Salvador, the military and death squads were responsible for thousands of
disappearances and murders of union leaders, community leaders, and suspected guerilla
sympathizers, including priests and nuns. In Guatemala, the army's counter-insurgency
campaign focused on indigenous communities, resulting in thousands of disappearances,
murders, and forced displacements.

People ran for their lives and they ran here.

See here for how systemic and heartless policy was:

The Shock Doctrine

The book argues that the free market policies of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman have
risen to prominence in some countries because they were pushed through while the
citizens were reacting to disasters or upheavals. It is implied that some man-made crises,
such as the Falklands war, may have been created with the intention of being able to push
through these unpopular reforms in their wake.

.......

Part 2 discusses the use of shock doctrine to transform South American economies in the
1970s, focusing on the coup in Chile led by General Pinochet. The apparent necessity for
the unpopular policies associated with shock therapy to be supported by torture is
explored.

The book also argues for our role in all this.

In sum, immigration reform should be about doing justice,and justice in this case is not black and
white, "close the borders, send them back". It can't work - too many undocumenteds(14-25
million), too many tangled stories of mothers and children, wives and grandparents. As for
closing the borders, try finding a "closed border" anywhere in the world that was truly "closed".
Not even the East Germans could it make it work.

To conclude, undocumented immigrants are a problem. We helped create that problem. A broken
immigration process perpetuates that problem. There is no simple, Arizona law solution. We
need new national policies that address all the parts of the problem. State fixes, local ordinances
don't work and are often unfair if not unenforceable. Enough with the scape-goating, anyone
serious on this issue is serious about comprehensive national reform. If they are not, they are
simply using the issue for their own purposes, scape-goating and demagoguing and ensuring that
this problem will be with us for a long time into the future.
Tags: comprehensive, crime, undocumenteds, wars, central america, klein, Prespective.shcok
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The Arizona Immigration Law in Perspective | 2 comments | Time to post comments expired.
Ridiculous! (0.00 / 0) [delete comment]
IP Address: 184.79.118.7
I admit: I didn't read the entire article above by lightseeker. No One reads postings that
looooong. But what I caught made no sense.

There IS an immigration and enforcement problem that everyone admits to. The federal
government hasn't made any strides to fix it, other than making speeches about it. Meanwhile,
the States are being buried with illegal immigration problems, including vast areas of AZ now
being a no-man's land. Effectively, the Mexicans have annexed a great swath of Arizona, and
the anti-immigration nuts poke their fingers in their noses and look the other way.

There IS a problem in AZ, and elsewhere, and if the federal government can't act, the states
must. Besides, the AZ law simply mirrors federal law so WTF??

What gets me is that people like lightseeker are opposed to the law for reasons of their own
making but offer no practical solution except "we must do better." What a crock!!

by: EWyatt @ Sun Aug 29, 2010 at 18:22:05 PM CDT

[ Reply | ]
You lost me when you said you didn't read the article (0.00 / 0) [delete comment]
IP Address: 207.80.127.240
That fact immediately illustrates the very problem I am addressing . Emoting about a problem is
not the same thing as understanding it or solving it.

As for my solution:comprehensive reform, not selective reform, of course, you wouldn't know
that if you didn't read the posting.
The punishment of not trying to understand a complex issue is being lead blindly down
somebody's path for their purposes. I call that dangerous and sad.

by: lightseeker @ Wed Sep 08, 2010 at 11:51:05 AM CDT