Online responses: Arizona’s new immigration law
Arizona’s new immigration law
If you ask me the uproar about this Arizona law is childish. People insist that it’s racist, but really there aren’t loads of blonde-haired blue-eyed illegal aliens sneaking over the Arizona border.
Evita Nabhan
Personally I think Arizona’s new law is a great law. We all recognize that we need to allow a better path to citizenship, but since the state can’t grant the citizenship the only way we can protect ourselves is to enforce harsher penalties against all illegal immigrants. We can’t sort the good and the bad until the Federal government acts. Instead of protesting our actions people should be petitioning their congressmen to reform immigration laws. We just want to keep the criminals and drug dealers out of our state.
This isn’t a big step towards profiling. If your involved in a crime officers already ask for identification. As American citizen do you think officers shouldn’t be able to ask for identification ever?
Has anyone even bothered to read the new law instead of repeating what they heard?
Arizona lawmakers have approved changes to the state’s controversial law cracking down on illegal immigrants. The changes were designed to answer charges made by protesters that it will lead to racial profiling by police. The original law stated police can conduct an immigration status check during any quote “lawful contact,” if they have reasonable suspicion a person is an illegal immigrant. It replaces “lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest,” clarifying police may not stop people without cause. The revised law also removes the word “solely” from the phrase “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.” Read the new Arizona Immigration Law
I just read the best reaction to the immigration law ever on CNN. Awesome! “OK… so a cop’s title is “Law Enforcement Officer”… in order to be an “Illegal Immigrant” you have to be breaking the law of the United States of America… why would we not expect our “Law Enforcement Officers” to enforce the law of the United States of America? This is not a racist statement, this is not an anti-immigrant statement, I’m not a tea-partier, Im a slightly left of center gay American whose partner of 8 years is a Canadian. My partner goes through a massive ordeal in order to stay in this country legally, which he does… Im not able to sponsor him for permanent residence, and there is no legal pathway for him to gain permanent residence… so for now we live with renewing his temporary status based on his job and NAFTA, hoping for either an employer willing to sponsor him for permanent residence (a 5 year long, very expensive process) or the repeal/invalidation of DOMA, or the passage of the UAFA bill. He has to prove his legality in this country quite often, and is required to have his passport with proof of his legality on him at all times… I am more a victim of discrimination, as a US Citizen who cannot sponsor my permanent partner for US residence, than these illegal aliens who are breaking the law of the united states”
The phrase “Lawful stop, detention, or arrest” means the same thing as lawful contact, they are just a less harsh way of saying it. Any officer can be empowered to make a lawful stop by any number of city ordinances that, under normal circumstances are rarely – if ever- enforced: Cops ticketing you for jaywalking an empty street without the proper signal, improperly disposing your chewing gum, suspicion of drunken behavior, etc.
No, the new amendments are the same deal with a prettier face and no matter which way you cut it, Arizona’s law opens the door for lawful racism. There are better ways to deal with immigration than xenophobic/racist measures and they start with better policy-making.