Arizona: Delicious Iced Tea or Home of Reactionary Politics?
Posted by: Not The Only One in Government Incompetence, Immigration, Latin America, Labor, Economics, Race & EthnicityWell, every Latino blogger seems to have something to say about the whole mess in Arizona, so I might as well say my piece too.
The new law is ridiculous, for several reasons. Let’s cut the bullshit and not pretend Arizona is looking to keep out illegal Canadians, Englishmen or Germans with this law. It’s the illegal Mexican immigrants that have white Arizonans going nuts, and it’s that specific group for whom the law is intended.
Law enforcement are required to ask the legal status of anyone who “appears” as if they may be in this country illegally. Aside from raiding the parking lot at Home Depot, how do they actually accomplish this? How does one “look” illegal? Furthermore, if such a thing existed as an illegal “appearance”, wouldn’t illegal aliens in Arizona deliberately change their appearance so as not to “look illegal”?
Obviously the byproduct of this legislation is going to be racial profiling against Hispanics, which is ridiculous given that in the U.S. there are many Hispanics who do not look Hispanic and many non-Hispanics who do. Native Americans, Middle Easterners, Italians and Greeks in Arizona will not be happy should they dare go outside their homes without proof of residence or citizenship and end up on an ICE bus to Tijuana. What’s more, if racial profiling against Hispanics becomes a way of life in Arizona, won’t some Hispanics try to disguise themselves as non-Hispanic, particularly the ones without documentation?
And if the big problem Arizona has with undocumented aliens is that they’re not paying into the system, states and counties should just cut their income tax rates in half and double the sales tax to make sure illegals pay much more when they buy things, maybe even introducing a sales tax on food as well. Arizona won’t be able to catch every illegal alien, but lowering payroll taxes and hiking sales taxes will ensure that every illegal alien pays into the system. Arizonans on welfare programs like Social Security and lower-income Arizonans can get extra funds from the state to compensate for the increased price at the stores due to the higher sales tax. If nothing else, the high sales tax will encourage illegal aliens to find a cheaper state in which to live and work.
And speaking of welfare, I’ve never understood the argument about illegal aliens draining the local welfare system. Growing up in New York City, I participated in several welfare programs, and every single program required me to present an original birth certificate and my Social Security card as well as a New York state photo ID to prove I am the person to whom the taxpayer ID has been assigned. This included public school enrollment, government-owned universities and student loans and grants as well, so I’m unclear about how an illegal alien would go about attending a state or city college, unless they were legally authorized to be in this country at the time of initial enrollment in which case the solution would be to verify each non-citizen student’s documents every semester.
If Arizona’s welfare programs don’t require proof of a taxpayer ID, then that’s Arizona’s fault. If you left your door unlocked when leaving home, and your home was in a high crime area, you’d almost deserve to be burglarized. The same goes for a welfare program that fails to prevent fraud or abuse; the solution is to correct the regulations regarding a particular welfare agency or scrap the program altogether, not punish an entire demographic which may or may not be abusing a welfare program.
But if an illegal alien somehow had someone else’s taxpayer ID (such as that of a dead person or a U.S. citizen who sells or rents out their SS number) then wouldn’t they just apply for an on-the-books job? The kind that withholds payroll taxes? A job will always pay out more than any welfare program, plus there is less scrutiny in receiving a paycheck than welfare benefits. Unless an illegal alien is elderly, disabled or just lazy (which does not describe even one percent of all illegal aliens) I could not imagine the scenario in which an illegal alien would prefer to collect a welfare check over a paycheck, and collecting both would only result in increased scrutiny and ultimately criminal prosecution, something no illegal immigrant wants.
I’d love to see some evidence that can prove millions of, if any, illegal aliens collect welfare benefits in the U.S. Until then, such an argument has no credibility. There is the possibility of some illegal aliens perhaps buying more than one than one Social Security number with which to collect a paycheck AND welfare benefits, but would the cost of an SS number pay for itself in welfare benefits, especially in collecting benefits under another name would raise a few red flags?
Arizona deserves all the bad press it is currently getting and the business it is losing, and a whole lot more. Not only for adopting a law enforcement measure that targets a specific ethnic group, but for embracing a law which will ultimately prove ineffective in decreasing the presence of illegal immigrants in their state.
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May 27th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Try reading the AZ law, which is a copy of the FEDERAL law regarding immigration that is NOT enforced anywhere in this nation. I ain’t against LEGAL immigration, especially since I’ve spent the better part of damn near 3 years to get my Canadian wife & son into this country, but the sorry bastards crossing borders or overstaying their visas have got to go. There are LEGAL aliens & ILLEGAL aliens…what part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand? VIVA LOS 1070! More states need to exercise their 10th Amendment rights because the federal government has failed them.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Free Mountaineer,
You’re wrong. The U.S has plenty of troops at the border. The border of Iraq, the border of South Korea, the border of Germany…
I’ve read SB 1070, and while the words “Mexican”, “Mexico” and “Hispanic” does not appear even once, racial profiling will be a byproduct of this law because the vast majority of illegal aliens in Arizona are from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Mexico is the only country in the world that shares a border with Arizona, so when a cop comes across someone, what characteristics could they possibly look for when determining whether a person is an illegal alien? Blond hair? Blue eyes? A Swedish accent? What part of that don’t YOU understand? The only way this law could be enforced without it leading to racial or ethnic profiling is if police ask every single person they encounter for documentation proving they are in the U.S. legally, which is ridiculous but is the only way a cop will catch an illegal alien 100% of the time.
Guarding the Arizona border makes far more sense, as 100% of the people crossing the border by climbing over or over or through a border fence instead of a regulated port of entry are definitely illegal aliens. And is isn’t that what SB 1070 was all about? Doing what the feds weren’t willing to do in the first place? Now that Obama has agreed to pull troops from Iraq and station them at the U.S.-Mexico border, it kind of makes the law unnecessary, doesn’t it? I don’t think 1,200 troops are really enough but it’s a good start.
Maybe people like you should stop masturbating to Lou Dobbs and start demanding that Washington pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and put them where they’re really needed…at the U.S. borders and coasts. If Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and all the other countries where U.S. troops are stationed need military protection, that’s their problem, not ours. Gosh, American troops paid with American tax money to defend American soil…what a concept!