04/29/10
 The upshot of the new law is that it's against the law to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona. Before you file this away with the department of redundancy department, let's take a second look. The nuts and bolts of this law require state law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration laws. Because immigration is a function of foreign affairs, it may be unconstitutional on its face. But beyond the initial federalism problem lurks some troubling civil rights implications as well.
The law allows police to ask for proof of immigration status from anyone they suspect is in the country illegally and allows them to detain without a warrant any person who does not possess the proper papers. Although the law is ethnically generic, it's not much of a leap to assume the bill is targeted at illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America. If being Hispanic is reason enough for a police officer to request paperwork from someone, then we'll have a genuine civil rights crisis on our hands - until the courts strike it down as a broad abuse of police power.
Illegal immigration is a serious concern, particularly for the porous border states of the Southwest, and serious problems require serious solutions. The answer isn't as simple as requiring Americans of Hispanic origin to carry papers with them at all times, and the immigration crisis isn't justification for instituting a police state. Anti immigration laws that focus exclusively on enforcement may be good politics, but they're bad policy. Under President Bush, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate worked together to fashion a new immigration policy that combined stricter enforcement with a path to citizenship for those already here. The bill, supported by members of both parties, also faced bipartisan opposition and died. Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Charles Schumer are working on a new bill that would address citizenship, a guest worker program, tighter border security, and biometric identification cards that employers could use to verify a person's eligibility to work in the United States. But it's an election year and immigration is a wedge issue so passing it will be an uphill battle.
Furthermore, the bill does nothing to address the underlying problems that lead to widespread illegal immigration. Without political and economic reform in the countries south of our border, the motivation to come to the US illegally will remain higher than the fear of being caught. Nobody wants to see American tax dollars used to prop up the economies of other countries but the truth is we can spend the money on enforcement and continue to see illegal immigration expand in spite of it, or we can buy a carrot to use along with the stick. If we're going to spend the money, isn't it better to spend it effectively, even if that means some of it goes to other countries?
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