Home » Language and that “controversial” Arizona immigration law

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Language and that “controversial” Arizona immigration law — 36 Comments

  1. “But wouldn’t numbers be part of it?”

    Only if facts in general are part of it. Otherwise, why bother? Controversial has become standard code for unpopular, but we’re going to ram it through anyway.

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  3. “Basic notions of fairness” in Obama parlance means To stand in defiance of Yankee aggression. In this case it refers to illegal immigrants from South of the border. In another case, it involves protecting radical Islam from being identified as a terror threat here and abroad. I remember having college professors that had the same sentiment. The last I remember, a vocal and open supporter of F.M.L.N. a frequent traveler to and supporter of Cuba, Ortega and now I suppose Chavez. He had nothing but withering criticism of the United States, but felt fine accepting a nice salary and tenure from the Commonwealth Of Mass. None of the tax paying students felt comfortable challenging him on his “controversial” views or teachings, as they were to busy working and attending school and didn’t have the time for the ire of this savant. Obama and company read from the same script. This Arizona thing will suck up more and more resources as the Alinsky’s, Sharptons and other interlopers will clog the system there with suit after suit. Texas and New Mexico need to jump on board. California will see armed insurrection before joining, I’m sure, even though I know there is a sizable percentage of voters there to support it.

    Sheesh, is it Martini time yet?

  4. I’m no expert on illegal immigration, but I think this bill is going to have a major impact. Obama and his folks can try to challenge or somehow circumvent it, but the fact that this law is on the books is going to make AZ seem like a significantly riskier place to go if you are an illegal immigrant. Fewer of them will decide to go or stay there, with the likely effect of driving more of them into TX, NM, CA, or points further north. If/when that happens, there will be more pressure on those other states to adopt similar measures, both to counter the increased flow of illegal immigrants and to reap the political rewards of following AZ’s example. This will go a long way toward breaking Washington’s policy of doing next to nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigrants.

  5. The actual text:

    For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. The person’s immigration status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code Section 1373(C).

    Find at:

    http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

  6. These things outrage two groups: illegals themselves, and the liberals/leftists who believe that making any such rules is unfair, and that any attempt to actually enforce them in an effective manner is tantamount to the worst racist excesses committed during the 20th century.

    Not absolutely for the leftists.

    If the masses of people sneaking illegally into America were “Europeans,” rather than Mexicans, the leftists would be rather for enforcement of the immigrations laws — this is because leftists have settled on “race replacement” as one part of their strategy for destruction of America.

    And, even more importantly, if the masses of people sneaking illegally into America were not likely useful as political cannon fodder for the leftists, they’d be strongly for enforcement of the immigrations laws — this is because the current mix of illegals, when taking into account how we apportion representation in Congress, multiplies the power-bases of the leftists … even before we get into the issure of illegals voting in US elections.

  7. Not to get too far off topic here, but +100000000000 points for quoting Princess Bride!!!

    And I don’t think the MSM finds this bill “controversial”, I think they see that it reinforces the idea that it’s something SPECIAL TO BE AN AMERICAN, and you have to work for that privilege! They aren’t too keen on those ideas.

  8. Deportation is nothing new. During The Great Depression, President Hoover ordered the
    deportation of ALL illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.

    Harry Truman deported illegals after WWII to create jobs for returning veterans.

    And then again in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower deported millions of Mexican Nationals in ‘Operation Wetback.’

    Seems like the market more than anything else controls the level of illegal immigration.

  9. To repeat: the American economy has been able to absorb immigrants during most if not all of its existence. If we didn’t have so many illegals, we could have more legals, who would come from a variety (shall we say global, multicultural) of places. Each illegal is thus taking a spot which could have belonged to some nice Eastern European or Filipina who filled out the forms, waited patiently, and has assented to conduct agreements.

    The only people who might be unfairly treated by this legislation are legal immigrants or citizens who happen to look like illegals in some way. We can all imagine abuses and unfairness in that direction. But this is not in any way unfair to the illegals. For them it is just desert.

  10. I regret to bore with the obvious: some 50 million American fetuses have been aborted, by all social classes, since Roe v. Wade. That necessarily put a major dent in our labor force, and created a lot of job vacancies.
    I rather suspect this is why biggish (especially, but not exclusively) businesses support amnesty and are so earnestly bilingual: workers and markets.

  11. Via Curtis:
    For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state
    So the law says that when someone is stopped in the performance of one’s duties as an official of the law, immigration status is queried. It doesn’t say that the official arbitrarily stops people on the street. A speeder is queried when he is stopped, for example.

    where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States
    That is very easy for the police officer to do. Speak English!

  12. The “broken windows” theory of crime says that arresting people for trivial offenses will result in a lower crime rate. One example: it was discovered that in enforcing “trivial” subway laws in NYC, a lot of turnstile-jumpers turned out to have warrants already out for them.

    Without going and getting a source, I have read that illegal aliens constitute a disproportionate amount of prison inmates in border states. It is quite possible that deporting illegal aliens will result in a reduction in the crime rate.

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  14. I suspect the “broken windows” mechanism turns on the perception of the relative permissiveness of the law enforcement authorities. More than simply taking miscreants out of circulation, it may also discourage others from initially becoming minor miscreants, then miscalculating how permissive the authorities are, graduating to more serious offenses, and ending up in the slam.

    This is also why punishment must be swift: criminals are generally of below normal intelligence, and don’t connect cause and effect well when they are removed from each other in time.

    Personal anecdote: in grad school a bunch of us shared a house, one of our housemates (not a grad student), it transpired, being the wife of a jailbird. Hubby had a) burgled somebody’s house, b) called the victim to offer to sell him back his stuff, c) showed up at the victim’s house with said stuff (aka evidence), and then d) was of course promptly arrested and returned to San Quentin (he was a returning letterman).

    We were stifling laughter at this point, but then wifey told us that he’d done exactly the same thing before, with exactly the same result, and couldn’t quite figure out the small but noticeable flaw in his cunning plan. Feigned coughing fits all ’round.

    Yeah, they’re that stupid.

  15. I keep thinking that one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made was allowing ourselves to embrace the notion that there was something people called “racial profiling” which could be identified as an infringement upon others’ civil liberties (investigating people for “driving while black”), and that it should be punished and eliminated. This alleged offense was first institutionalized and now has morphed into a situation where we harass ordinary air travelers and treat them as potential terrorists in the absence of anything resembling probable cause in order to avoid identifying real enemies. Now we hamstring ourselves in identifying and dealing with illegal immigrants in a forthright way by pretending that Mexicans coming here in contravention of our laws will not look like Mexicans.

    There’s something deeply wrong with a society, a culture, that hates itself this much. We are hyper-alert to offenses we might give others, and refuse the capacity to take any ourselves. A few years ago I read a piece by a Brit named Harold Jacobson that I’ve never forgotten, dealing with what he referred to as Selbsthass, or self-hatred (translated from the German; many have recognied it, actually). He said (I’m paraphrasing a bit from memory) that we should not seek the causes of others’ actions against us in our own actions, accepting blame for our own victim-hood; to do so is a particularly perverse sort of decadence. We should instead allow them to sin egregiously on their own behalf, and go to hell unmolested by our guilt.

  16. “”There’s something deeply wrong with a society, a culture, that hates itself this much””
    Betsybounds

    Betsy think about how pop culture has continuously sought to demoralise traditional Americans since around the time of Reagan. The half it has worked on so far, we call liberal democrats. The half with some partial demoralisation we call republicans.

    I don’t know the formula of what makes some more susceptible than others. But i do know the people i notice afflicted by it seem more prone to fashion consciousness and fitting in.

    Plus, want to see a liberal cower like a vampire looking at a cross? Just mention the word “wholesome”. They will go ape sh*t at just the reminder of such a concept.

  17. SteveH, You’re right. And there’s another word you might mention to these liberals if you want to see them go ape-shit: “Shame.”

    I’ve long thought that part of the liberal disfigurement is secularism, and in extreme cases, committed atheism. Of course it depends to some extent on acceptance of the fact of inherent human sinfulness–which the Founders appear to have acknowledged. People from at least the Judeo-Christian tradition have somewhere to go with their sinfulness, and a way to have it expiated (not wanting to go too far into theology, here). Liberals don’t, though, and are left with being forced to create their own redemption–which, of course, they are unable to do, because it can’t be done. They recognize no one able to forgive them, so they must perforce forgive themselves.

    That’s a powerful agent for simultaneously promoting both arrogance and self-abasement.

  18. OB, that guy sounds like a candidate for the Darwin Awards.

    Although I never met the guy (not being a convict myself), apparently he was considered a sage in prison, a wise man to whom others turned for counsel. /g

    I keep thinking that one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made was allowing ourselves to embrace the notion that there was something people called “racial profiling” which could be identified as an infringement upon others’ civil liberties (investigating people for “driving while black”),

    Absolutely. I went on a rant about this on another thread. Racial profiling is just good police work. To anyone who doesn’t think so, I say: what about gender profiling? Age profiling? Police do those all the time, and quite rightly.

    To think that black teenaged males are no more likely to have committed a crime than blue-haired grannies is ridiculous on its face. If blacks don’t like being the subject of suspicion – which I fully understand – then blame black criminals for focusing that suspicion on them, don’t blame police for responding to crime statistics. There’s a reason why the leading cause of death among black males 15-25 is homicide – by other black males.

    As Jesse Jackson famously said, to paraphrase, he hated feeling anxious that he might be mugged, then turning around to see the approaching person was white, and feeling relief.

  19. Having served as a police office for nearly two decades, perhaps I can provide some insight.

    (1) The police always engage in profiling, but criminal profiling, not racial profiling. If, for example, an officer is assigned to patrol a district where 90% of the crime is committed by black males between the ages of 16 and 24, they would be an idiot, and likely to rightfully lose their job, if they ignored that salient fact. Officers engage in criminal profiling, using what they know about those most likely to commit crimes and giving those potential criminals special attention. It’s exactly what we pay the police to do.

    (2) Contrary to common misperceptions (and not a little purposeful lying), the police don’t just do whatever they want. They must be well educated about and extraordinarily careful about the laws they enforce in particular and the Constitution. If a person’s actions don’t match the elements of a given specific law or laws, no arrest (Yes, I know some cops are incompetent or make mistakes, but we have to hire the police from the human race, so we are somewhat limited).

    (3) There are very few police officers relative to the population of any community and they simply don’t have the time to chase after every Hispanic-looking person in sight to check them for immigration status, even if they were so stupid or unprofessional that they wanted to do that.

    (4) “Reasonable suspicion” is specifically mentioned in the Arizona law and is a fundamental principal of the Constitution studied and applied by the police every day. It basically means facts or circumstances that leads a reasonable police officer to believe that a crime has happened or is about to happen and a specific person or persons has committed or is about to commit it. With RS, an officer can detain a person for a short period–about 15 minutes or less–to identify the person and see if something illegal is up. They can conduct a pat search, and in some cases even use handcuffs, but they can certainly check for outstanding warrants and immigration status. All of this is long settled law and the Arizona statue does not in any way step outside the lines of this clear area of law, nor even approach the line.

    (5) Having read the law today, it’s clear that “racial profiling” is clearly prohibited. The law does not command any action, but merely allows an officer to check immigration status “if practicable” when they are in contact with someone for any lawful reason. Keep in mind that if another citizen can walk up to you and engage you in conversation, so can the police.

    (6) The law creates nothing new, merely restating well settled procedures under the Constitution and supporting, not contradicting, Federal law. It imposes no new burden on anyone that is not already either required under state or federal law (carrying a driver’s license or a green card if a guest in the country) and prohibits or makes illegal no conduct that would be otherwise perfectly legal.

    The bottom line: If you’re a Hispanic who is going about his business, not obviously breaking the law, and not doing foolish things that would bring you to the direct attention of a police officer, your chances of being stopped and questioned are generally no greater than that of any other person of any color.

    Again, the police just don’t have the time to focus on any single crime. Claims of rampant future police harassment and violation of civil rights are race-baiting hogwash.

  20. Weren’t we discussing last fall that before this is too far along, Obama would be stepping on states’ rights?

  21. Mike, thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t trying to justify picking on people by virtue of their race, but rather addressing the specious argument that for police to stop/ arrest/ otherwise deal with blacks out of proportion to their incidence in the population does not, without more, constitute discrimination any more than it would with respect to males or the young.

    Liberals have attempted to conflate criminal profiling with racial profiling, but if criminal profiling results in a disproportionate number of black arrestees, then so be it. My tack is to rehabilitate the term “racial profiling” by pointing out the parallel to gender and age profiling.

  22. mikemcdaniel Says:

    Keep in mind that if another citizen can walk up to you and engage you in conversation, so can the police.

    I’m not arguing the points you made, but it seems like if any random stranger walked up to me and tried to strike up a conversation, I could say “Leave me alone” and turn around and walk away.

    But something tells me that if I did that with a police officer, I would tend to arouse his suspicion.

  23. A compromise: Let most of the illegal stay, but in exchange for a legal status, they give up any pathway to citizenship (and the vote), and any right to sponsor relatives or others to come.

  24. Rasmussen ran a poll that suggests a majority of hispanic citizens of AZ support the bill (see Hot Air’s article and link at http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/27/rasmussen-majority-of-latinos-in-arizona-support-letting-cops-check-for-immigration-status/ . Makes sense to me – citizens of whatever ethnicity have theirs and don’t really want competition, so they favor a tightened border. Self-appointed spokescritters for hispanic rights, however, see their pool of supporters drying up if the border is tightened. Que lastima

  25. One point and a question:

    POINT: The argument that the law employs criminal, not racial, profiling operates from a simple syllogism:

    A. All illegals are Hispanic.
    B. I’m tasked to remove illegals.
    C. I’ll profile only Hispanics.

    This is a valid categorical syllogism where A and B are members of C;

    but the left incorrectly imposes upon us something like this:

    A. All illegals are Hispanic.
    B. All illegals are criminal.
    C. All Hispanics are criminal.

    wherein the conclusion is false. (In this case there are two major premises instead of a major and a minor one)

    QUESTION: What is to prevent police from merely stating a fictitious “lawful contact” like “You forgot to turn on your blinker?”

  26. SteveH, you must be younger than I. Popular culture has striven to demoralise American culture since before Reagan. I am 57, and can assure you it dates back to at least 1965. Beyond that, I am a prisoner of the written record, with attendant difficulties of interpretation. But popular culture was my natural habitat from 12-22, so I can speak from personal experience there.

    I have read – no lie – claims of this going back to the mid 1800’s in England, as academics increasingly turned on those who made their money “in trade,” sneering and condescending.

  27. According to Mark Levin, this is nothing more than a carefully-worded appeal to enforce federal immigration laws that are currently on the books. The federal government is bound to protect the states, and it is failing to do so. Apparently, it is so bad that citizens living withing 100 miles of the border are terrified to leave their houses for any length of time lest they be invaded by illegals and drug runners. We need a border for many reasons.

  28. The problem the Dems have with this law is that it requires enforcement of federal immigration law:

    Prohibits law enforcement officials and law enforcement agencies of this state or counties, municipalities and political subdivisions from restricting or limiting the enforcement of the federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.

    You could call it the anti-San Francisco Liberal law, i.e., no local yokel can arbitrarily turn a blind eye to unauthorized aliens. If they do, they can be sued by a lawful Arizona resident. It also makes it illegal to block traffic to pick up someone to do work elsewhere. It makes it illegal to transport an unauthorized alien. It permits local prosecutors to investigate employers willfully employing unauthorized aliens.

    And the rending of clothes crowd skip right over this part:

    Stipulates that a law enforcement official or agency cannot solely consider race, color or national origin when implementing these provisions, except as permitted by the U.S. or Arizona Constitution.

    · Specifies that a person is presumed to be lawfully present if the person provides any of the following:
    é˜ A valid Arizona driver license.
    é˜ A valid Arizona nonoperating identification license.
    é˜ A valid tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal identification.
    é˜ A valid federal, state or local government issued identification, if the issuing entity requires proof of legal presence before issuance.

    As well as the fact that a lawful permanent resident alien has been required by federal law to carry their resident alien card at all times since the 1940s.

  29. So my Romanian son, who became a citizen the second he landed at Logan and doesn’t habitually carry papers documenting that, need only show his NH driver’s license or USMC ID when he is caught speeding in Arizona? (Which he likely would, if he goes to Arizona). No problem. What’s the fuss about?

  30. There’s something deeply wrong with a society, a culture, that hates itself this much.

    well, we learned and got PC from the feminists…

    if you change your sentence a bit, you will get it

    There’s something deeply wrong with a person, a gender, that hates itself this much.

    in case you and other women didnt notice, their doctrine (which extends marx’s) basically says we are all the same… right?

    so there is no such thing as a woman. the concept of woman was invented by men to enslave them… which is why they hate everything female and make mini men. the secret being in every woman they say, is a man!

    but remember how we learned that ‘profiling’ logic..

    you weren’t allowed to look at a woman who wanted to be a cop and say, you weigh 80lbs you cant be one. (gender profiling)

    you could not say, because she was a woman, she couldnt be a fire’person’

    the fact that THEY NORMALIZED the mental basis for what your pointing out shows that you and others DO know whats normal and healthy and what inst, but your not allowed to cogitate who is responsible for tracking that mud through your mind.

    PC started as Conciousness Raising…

    first you raised everyones consciousness, a nice cultist term that says your superior when you give up your own thinking and take on what is ideologically correct. ie politically correct.

    we as a natino could never normalize such thinking through race and such, we HAD to normalize it as a way to refuse to deny opportunities to women due to their being women!!!

    once we took the bait, they kept dragging us all over with it. and as i said, we love our cancer so much, we just kept at it.

    the idea is that in the collective of women and the new socialist society they SAID they were making… one has to replace ones own thoughts and ideas with ‘politically correct ideological thinking’. this is done through a process of consciousness raising… today such things are formalized into college classes and are required. in a way its like innoculating people with a broken way to think so that you can play them for advantage.

    women wiling to take advantage regardless of morals, thought how great it was, and how much power it had. however all they were doing was using up the social cache… not much left now is there?

    i can show you, and give you tons of examples that we dont argue today… and the truth is, that if you want to argue the point your arguing, it leads back to these people and their thoughts… and since their thoughts are disjointed and not connected, it bites them (the way the health bill bit the politicians without them knowing it)

    they claim it started in the 80s.. but if you read ELAINE PIZZY, you learn that it was there by a different name in the 50s.

    Consciousness raising (often abbreviated c.r.) is a form of political activism, pioneered by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition. It is the first half of the adage “Admitting the problem is half the battle”.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising

    when the progressives used that up, and it was not effective, it moved to the more militant thing we call PC.

    ie, they planted the seeds of the process of artificial thought control using cultural mechanisms. once planted, the children grew up, and found it acceptable to take points of view as dicatated and not as reached by self conclusion through education.

    [edited for length by n-n]

  31. NOT TO IMPLY I TAKE ANY SIDE IN THIS —

    Coyoteblog has his own take on the law.

    Since Warren is a medium small private business owner based in Arizona (his firm subcontracts to maintain parks and recreation facilities) and, in my own experience, seems to be both level-headed and reasonable, I’d suggest his views be taken seriously and considered.

    His position, is, (if I may be so bold as to paraphrase it — any errors are mine) in brief, that, as a libertarian, he doesn’t like the “Your identity papers, please?” element of it, and feels the whole thing to be a somewhat Draconian overreaction to a relatively minor problem and a limited set of anecdotal situations.

    It’s worth it to read what he says, as someone in mild opposition to it who isn’t just parroting the libtard party line.

    He’s written a couple pieces on it now — feel free to use the above general link and scroll down to:

    Probable Cause
    April 26, 2010, 10:01 am

    and the (more recent, but the first you’d encounter scrolling down)

    It’s Like Wag the Dog
    April 28, 2010, 9:01 am

    By all means, read the comments, too — he has a set of intelligent commentators just like neo does, even down to the libby parrot.

  32. Oh, and this one, too, which I believe was his first commentary on it:

    An Immigration Proposal
    April 26, 2010, 9:49 am

    P.S., he has long been a severe critic of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who, if you read his blog, you’ll side with Warren that anything that supports Arpaio is dealing with one devil to get at another.

    From Warren’s observations, I think giving Arpaio a free hand to go after illegal immigrants is kind of like giving Hitler a free hand to go after Mussolini.

  33. Once again the media is showing it’s bias and support for the left wing by supporting illegal immigration while tearing at the very fabric of our Nation. The fact is that illegal immigration is just that, illegal and all Arizona is doing is upholding the Constitution. It is truly sad that Americans are being called racists for defending their rights as Americans and for trying to defend the Constitution.Americans need to stand up and fight for thei rights and come to the realization that our country is under siege.

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