I don’t like it and I don’t think it’ll stand up to any sort of legal challenge.
That said, I understand that residents of Arizona are rather annoyed with illegal immigrants coming over and committing crimes and want the Federal government to get involved. I get that, but I think they went about it in the wrong way.
So, here’s my plan for Arizona.
You want the Feds to start helping? Take every illegal alien convicted of a crime that would warrant jail time, present and future, and put them on buses headed for DC. Drop them off at the steps to the Capital and set them free. Maybe sprinkle a few around the apartments inhabited by our Congress Critters while they stay in DC during the week. Maybe send them weekly updates on the types of folks they just dropped off on the door steps too. “Juan Murderer: Convicted in 2008 and released in 2010 outside where you work. We gave him back the murder weapon because it was just taking up space in our evidence room. Can’t convict him again anyway so we didn’t need it. Sleep tight!”
That’ll get their attention!
I’m half joking there but I’m half serious too. We need to be able to keep dangerous criminals out of this country and with that we need to be sure that if we deport a dangerous criminal they don’t just wander on back in.
Now, when you say something like that folks look at you and think “ZOMG! You’re racist and think Mexicans are going to kill us and rape our wives!” No, that’s not the case. I grew up in Ottawa County, Michigan, USA. We’re big on agriculture out here, an industry I spent a significant number of years in, and I can guarantee you I’ve worked with a whole pile of illegals in my life. I like them. I really do. They aren’t any different from the rest of us, aside from the few criminals, and we have a good share of them in our native population as well.
In my perfect world we’d have borders that looked like the checkout lanes of your average supermarket. People would pile up and somebody would run the equivalent of a NICS check on them. If approved they come on over.
I’ll offer you some reasoning why busing criminals to Washington won’t work. The government in DC has nearly enough police with guns to protect the people who really call the shots (99.5% of the time). Those people who live without government protection will be the people who are burgled, mugged or killed.
Legalizing immigration and drugs will do more to eliminate crime, violence and murder than forcing Arizona police to arrest and (attempt to) deport Jose the Gardener.
I figure that SB 1070 won’t change business as usual as the same police who call the feds to turn over illegal immigrants will get the same answer they do now: “We’ll be over when we have the staff and facilities to process them”. The feds aren’t going to have any more buses than they did before. The deportation bus will arrive and deport no more and no less people than it did before this bill was signed.
It doesn’t matter that McCain and Kyl are “demanding” 3,000 more National Guardsmen and 3,000 Border Patrol agents. Their demand is as empty as other Arizona government officials to “secure the border”. They all want the feds to pay for it – “somebody else” should pay for it.
Who was it that said “You can have open borders or a welfare state, but not both.”? How many Hospitals have folded from Illegal Overload? How many Illegals can we have drawing benefits in one form or another before the system collapses? How exactly does allowing a mass influx of third world unskilled non-English speaking People who flat out refuse to assimilate into our culture and in fact hold it in contempt(see La Raza) benefit this Country? Where exactly does The Reconquista fit into the whole open borders philosophy?
Jeremy, I don’t care what color putative rulers happen to be, oppression comes in all the colors of the rainbow. So long as immigrants don’t blast music while driving down the street I don’t have the same worry that you do. I see the vast majority of immigrants having at least as good a work ethic than native born Americans. Hospitals don’t need to close if laws mandating medical care are repealed. So long as an immigrant pays his own way I say let the cotton pickers in.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Let+Them+In+by+Jason+L.+Riley
There are plenty of people who advocate for socialism – I personally think they are a greater hazard than non-English speaking immigrants.
Wow.
Just wow.
To say that our respective views have drifting in opposite directions as time progresses would be an understatement, especially since your post regarding Health Care awhile back. On this one though, I truly am surprised.
I agree with your assumption regarding “a perfect world.” Unfortunately, we don’t live there. As the old saying goes, “The Problem with Capitalism is Capitalists. The Problem with Socialism is Socialism” highlights my point. Socialism, in a perfect world, would be the ideal. Everyone is equal, no one has anymore than anyone else, everyone is on a level playing field. Since that will never be, Socialism will never work. The same can be said of this assumption regarding illegal immigration. Prior to the social programs that have handcuffed our development as a nation, from social security to medicare, illegal immigration wasn’t an issue … as it didn’t cost anything in national terms. Now, as the following Washington Post article references, it’s costing the United States of America, and therefore you and, in excess of 10 billion dollars. That is the reason Arizona passed this law. It’s costing us money.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33783-2004Aug25.html
As for whether or not it will stand up to legal review, I see no reason why it won’t. The Federal Government has laws, and is making the choice to not enforce them. Arizona, in passing this law, is simply ensuring that both those statues, and those of the State of Arizona (which, should be noted, the Federal Government has no basis in, given the 10th Amendment).
-Abject.
Abject, I’m with you for the most part there. I realize we can’t have an open borders policy until we fix a whole mess of other things first.
Shut down the border. Deport as u catch them. Simple, Eisenhower did it……