This last week I have been contemplating a blog on Goldman Sachs which will be forthcoming but instead I have chosen to focus on the Arizona Immigration Bill since it has been the dominate discussion point on talk radio, the internet and the TV news stations. This bill is a lightening rod for sure and although I believe the bill to be a useless and ill-conceived piece of legislation enacted by a desperate group of political nut jobs hopefully it will bring attention to the serious issue of immigration reform. First let’s talk about this bill. If anyone thinks this is going to actually help put a stop to illegal immigration then I want what you’re smoking (I will just dedicate that line to Bill Maher). This law is going to allow police officers to racially profile anyone with dark skin. If I am a Latino American living in Arizona I would be outraged that I can be stopped at anytime and asked to present identification. The bill is very vague about what the criteria is for stopping some one other then saying, “reasonable suspicion.” (See the link below for a summary of this bill) What exactly does that mean, reasonable suspicion? Does it mean that a bilingual Mexican American speaking to a friend in Spanish can cause suspicion and then questioning? What if they forgot their driver’s license that day or lost it the night before, are they going to be arrested? After all they are of Mexican decent, with no identification on them. Is the officer going to take their word for it that they are American or arrest them on “reasonable suspicion?” These are American citizens who are going to be effected and yes the legislation has been created to target illegal aliens but how will the police be able to differentiate between those that are illegal and those that are citizens? They won’t and therefore citizens of this country who have brown skin and live in Arizona are going to live in constant annoyance if not fear of being sought out by the police. I might be simplifying the issue here but this bill is trying to simplify an issue that is highly complex and extremely diverse. This is not going to stop illegal immigration. It’s like saying let’s clean up our latest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with a tin fishing boat and a teaspoon. Sure maybe you will get a little bit of oil but the rest is just going to slip further and further away. Maybe this bill will help Arizona, all the illegal aliens there will just go to California, New Mexico, Utah or Texas. What we need is real reform at the Federal level that will actually make a difference.
What kind of legislation would actually make a difference in immigration are the questions and answers we should be seeking. What do you do with the estimated 8-12 million or more illegal people here already? You can’t round them up and ship them off to Mexico, Cuba, China and other countries of origin because it would cost trillions of dollars and it would take forever. And in the particular case of Mexico they are part of the problem. They are overrun by drug lords and a corrupt government, they have little industry and a huge population. Can you blame people for wanting to come across the boarder to America, the land of opportunity? I don’t know about you but if I had the choice of living in abject poverty in Mexico, becoming a drug mule or literally working for pennies a day or I could come to America illegally and make some decent cash I know what options and risks I would take. And when you look at the situation in this light it also becomes a humanitarian issue. Not so simple is it? That’s right this is complicated, far more complicated then profiling someone’s skin color and tossing them back over the boarder. Maybe in Arizona they will catch 1000 people with this new law and big deal we will still have 11, 999,000 more illegal people in this country. Teaspoon to oil slick folks, it’s just not going to make a difference. These are some of the questions we should be asking and as far as the answers, I definitely don’t have all of them but here are some ideas. You legalize as many of these aliens as possible as long as they don’t have a criminal record here or in Mexico. You give them green cards and put them on the path to citizen ship. You force them to pay taxes and get jobs at minimum wage or higher and you force employers to hire people legally and pay the taxes involved in having legal employees. The argument is these aliens are taking jobs away from hard working Americans. The truth is these aliens make it possible for employers to pay them at substandard wages and employers don’t have to pay taxes for these employees since they are off the books. Therefore they are not taking jobs away from Americans because Americans would never be hired for these jobs in the first place. The next step is to close our boarders in some real sense. I heard Ed Shultz interviewing Pat Buchanan on the radio today about having the National Guard patrol our boarders or the US Army. Not a bad idea in my book. Instead of spending billions on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan let’s bring some of these troops home and have them close off our boarders in Texas, California and Arizona. If they can bring order to Iraq then surely the can bring some order to the US boarders. This would make a huge difference in stopping illegal aliens from entering the country not to mention it would put a major dent in stopping illegal drugs and the people shipping them into this country as well. Now take all of this and ask congress to pass some sort of reasonable immigration reform and you will see where the true problem lies. You see politicians, both democrats and republicans, are in bed with businesses and farmers. These businesses/farmers, etc can’t afford to pay workers legally along with the taxes involved in having legal employees and keep their cost down so the translation here would be if we legalize these jobs then our cost of goods go up or businesses go under. It’s an ugly little problem and this in a very simplified nut shell is why no sitting president or congress has been able to pass any kind of real immigration reform. I have no idea how we solve this problem and I have really only scratched the surface of the issue but I do know that this sham of a bill in Arizona is not going to make a bit of difference other then boosting the ratings of talk shows, scaring the Latino population in Arizona and sending illegal immigrants further into hiding in this country.
Attached below are links to a few good articles on this subject plus links to the actual bill.
Please comment with your thoughts and ideas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-arizona-of-2010-is-th_b_551062.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/04/arizonas_shameful_immigration.html?referrer=emaillink
Bill
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf
Summary of Bill:
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm
