I should probably just begin searching for any law even liable to live up to its advertising. Still, in doing so I might end up rejecting any rules other than traffic regulations and The Ten Commandments. Certainly Arizona's recent immigration law isn't going to make the list.
For openers, the thing's most controversial clause merely forbids state and local authorities in Arizona from failing to uphold national guidelines on matters of immigration. Now, according to my high school civics class, federal law already overrides state law, so I'm at a loss to understand the reason for having to repeat that fact. Didn't the police in Arizona already know this? Furthermore, and contrary to the apparent views of the laws supporters, this obligation to heed the feds does nothing in itself to limit illegal immigration; it merely makes the federal government the judge of questions on immigration. In fact, in further proof of this idea, another clause specifically requires state and local police to confirm the legality of immigrants through federal authorities.
Of course, this law might not even mange to keep state and local cops bowing to federal directives. It charges only $1,000 a day to any police department not following federal guidelines, and even as a $365,000 yearly fee, that would still make it an affordable expense for any police department valuing its autonomy or any community benefiting from the cheap labor of illegals. In fact, it's less than 3% of the yearly budget for either the Flagstaff police Department or the small town of Fountain Hills.
Another clause of this law "enables" police to check the immigration status of drivers stopped for a traffic violation, but this alleged empowerment also exists already. After all, after stopping a driver, a cop can legally demand identification and can even take someone in for refusing to present their ID or for presenting a forged one. As illegals are not going to have legitimate IDs, this would, in reality, amount to a check of a driver's immigration status. Apparently though, reality is not enough for the Arizona legislature; they need a law! Oh well, perhaps Arizona's illegals will simply ride public transportation and avoid the whole problem.
A further, even more worthless section of this law permits the police to arrest citizens for stopping their cars to hire illegals and illegals for attempting to accept employment from those citizens--but only if they block traffic! Again: Aren't the police in Arizona already supposed to stop you from doing that? If not, we may want to re-name this law the "Get Those Arizona Cops Off Their Lazy Butts" act. It probably won't accomplish such a worthwhile goal, of course, but it probably will drive employers to seek workers off-road.
The law does approach having some sort of teeth in setting specific prison terms for illegals, but those are, at best, baby teeth. The cost for care and housing of a prisoner, even in minimum security and even after stringent economy measures, can cost an average of over fifty dollars a day or eighteen thousand a year. Therefore, imprisoning illegals could actually be more expensive than just giving them welfare benefits--and quite frankly even the few-year sentences mandated are not going to stop repro-visitors form coming here to set their children free from a their birth country's possible poverty, corruption and crime.
Perhaps the law's one real innovation, however, is in establishing a website for employers to register workers and for law enforcement to check various records on suspected illegals. Like nearly any new law, however, this clause may be open to at least some misuse. The website for registering workers, for instance, does not in fact require immigrant workers to present picture IDs to their employers. Given either a little dishonesty or some competent forgery then, that very registry could just become a clearinghouse for workers with fake identification or no identification at all.
Personally, by the way, I wouldn't really mind if this law were nothing more than a set of repetitions for existing regulations. Heck, I'd even encourage our government to pass just such redundancies rather than adding yet more to the untrackable vastness of law and interpretation currently weighing on us. This bill, however, does have a dark side, a capacity for harm hiding in its willingness to accept anonymous accusation as a reason for investigation and its lack of any stated limit on the number or duration of investigations pursued against any one person or firm. One clause does set penalties for making false reports of the hiring of illegals, but nothing specifically prevents accusers from hiding behind that cloak of anonymity to force the police into prolonged or repeated investigations of a company or person, even after repeated proofs of innocence. Would a business' rivals or a man's enemies use this to harass them or distract them from the profitable use of their time? Possibly...
After reading the text of this ineffective law, I found myself wondering about anyone's real desire to stop illegal immigration in Arizona. For better or worse after all, many businesses there and elsewhere do rely on cheap illegal labor to keep the cost of food and other goods low; and many people just might resent a rise in such a limitless thing as prices more than the loss of a limited amount of their taxes. Of course, the police could shrink the demand for illegal labor by universally enforcing minimum wage laws and thus removing the advantage of hiring illegals, but no one ever seems to suggest that. Perhaps we just want it all--cheap groceries and freedom from the people toiling to pick it. That would certainly explain this law's willingness to drive illegals underground without actually giving police a new means of arresting them.
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