The Glade 4.0

The arguments we’ve heard against it either misrepresent its text or are otherwise inaccurate. As someone who helped draft the statute, I will rebut the major criticisms individually:

It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them. It is true that the Arizona law makes it a misdemeanor for an alien to fail to carry certain documents. “Now, suddenly, if you don’t have your papers ... you’re going to be harassed,” the president said. “That’s not the right way to go.” But since 1940, it has been a federal crime for aliens to fail to keep such registration documents with them. The Arizona law simply adds a state penalty to what was already a federal crime. Moreover, as anyone who has traveled abroad knows, other nations have similar documentation requirements.

“Reasonable suspicion” is a meaningless term that will permit police misconduct. Over the past four decades, federal courts have issued hundreds of opinions defining those two words. The Arizona law didn’t invent the concept: Precedents list the factors that can contribute to reasonable suspicion; when several are combined, the “totality of circumstances” that results may create reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

For example, the Arizona law is most likely to come into play after a traffic stop. A police officer pulls a minivan over for speeding. A dozen passengers are crammed in. None has identification. The highway is a known alien-smuggling corridor. The driver is acting evasively. Those factors combine to create reasonable suspicion that the occupants are not in the country legally.

The law will allow police to engage in racial profiling. Actually, Section 2 provides that a law enforcement official “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” in making any stops or determining immigration status. In addition, all normal Fourth Amendment protections against profiling will continue to apply. In fact, the Arizona law actually reduces the likelihood of race-based harassment by compelling police officers to contact the federal government as soon as is practicable when they suspect a person is an illegal alien, as opposed to letting them make arrests on their own assessment.

It is unfair to demand that people carry a driver’s license. Arizona’s law does not require anyone, alien or otherwise, to carry a driver’s license. Rather, it gives any alien with a license a free pass if his immigration status is in doubt. Because Arizona allows only lawful residents to obtain licenses, an officer must presume that someone who produces one is legally in the country.

State governments aren’t allowed to get involved in immigration, which is a federal matter. While it is true that Washington holds primary authority in immigration, the Supreme Court since 1976 has recognized that states may enact laws to discourage illegal immigration without being pre-empted by federal law. As long as Congress hasn’t expressly forbidden the state law in question, the statute doesn’t conflict with federal law and Congress has not displaced all state laws from the field, it is permitted. That’s why Arizona’s 2007 law making it illegal to knowingly employ unauthorized aliens was sustained by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In sum, the Arizona law hardly creates a police state. It takes a measured, reasonable step to give Arizona police officers another tool when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law enforcement duties.

And it’s very necessary: Arizona is the ground zero of illegal immigration. Phoenix is the hub of human smuggling and the kidnapping capital of America, with more than 240 incidents reported in 2008. It’s no surprise that Arizona’s police associations favored the bill, along with 70 percent of Arizonans.

Changes to the bill language will actually remove the word “solely” from the sentence, “The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin.”

Another change replaces the phrase “lawful contact” with “lawful stop, detention or arrest” to apparently clarify that officers don’t need to question a victim or witness about their legal status.

A third change specifies that police contact over violations for local civil ordinances can trigger questioning on immigration status

Arathain:

The Federal government mediates disputes between the states and provides some level of normalization in trade, currency, etc. However, it's powers are very strongly limited by the Constitution.

Sounds like good changes. However some are likely to refuse to be placated.

Arizona lawmakers tweak immigration law over racial profiling concerns

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoen ... nkiSQ.cspx

For example, the Arizona law is most likely to come into play after a traffic stop. A police officer pulls a minivan over for speeding. A dozen passengers are crammed in. None has identification. The highway is a known alien-smuggling corridor. The driver is acting evasively. Those factors combine to create reasonable suspicion that the occupants are not in the country legally.

Apparently what made America great in the past is no longer true.

The people claiming that this is somehow not about racial profiling seem, quite frankly, to be living in some alternate fairyland universe where police are going to rely on their psychic powers to peer into the minds of the people they encounter, rather than relying on external signals like . . . skin color. [ellipsis in original]

...Perhaps uncharitably, I think that the people who supported this law are not overbothered because they're not the legal citizens whose skin color just became "suspicious." Yes, again, I understand that they have legitimate concerns. But I just can't believe that they would think that this was a proportionate and sensible response to those concerns if they themselves risked being held in the pokey until the police could check their immigration status. The reason this law passed is that the people who support it--the same people now claiming that this isn't about racial profiling--know that it only applies to people who are poorer and darker skinned and probably speak with funny accents, anyway.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this law, in fact, if it required the police to check the immigration status of every single person they pulled over, without any gauzy "reason to believe" fig leaf to cover up what's really going on.

Raise your hand if you think that law could have passed in Arizona.

The folks arguing against my alleged accusations of "racism" on the part of Arizonans are missing the point. I didn't accuse Arizona of racism, and I have no idea whether they are racist or not. What I do know is that majorities are usually markedly less concerned with the infringements of liberty that they expect will only happen to other people. This is not racism, it's human nature.

If the immigration problems in Arizona are really so serious that they merit deep intrusions upon the liberty of citizens who happen to resemble illegal immigrants, than they are serious enough to intrude on the liberty of everyone. Don't make the cops check the status of anyone who they "reasonably suspect" is illegal; make them check the status of everyone, no matter how blond-haired, blue-eyes, and fluent in standard American english they may be. If you forget your license at home, the police detain you, just like they detain anyone of mexican descent, while someone fetches it. If you can't produce a birth certificate, passport, or similar, then you wait in the pokey until they can verify your legal status. No police discretion. No profiling.

If it's legitimate to do it to them, than it's equally legitimate to do it to you, if for nothing else than the benefits of social cohesion.

If, however, this law could not possibly be passed if it affected the majority, because it's far too intrusive and would result in a lot of people passing unhappy hours in jail or waiting by the side of the road while the police checked their ID with immigration . . . well, then, it's probably not something we should be doing to other people, either. [ellipsis in original]

What ever happened to:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Apparently what made America great in the past is no longer true.

So why is it wrong to profile again?

How many illegals are in Arizona that *aren't* of hispanic descent?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Further, it's just unrealistic to think the 12-people-in-a-minivan scenario is in any way representative of how most immigration checks will go down. The most common scenario will almost certainly be working class hispanic individuals and/or families who get pulled over for some minor reason, don't happen to speak English very well, and don't look like they have much money.

Which, if they get pulled over, will have to produce a driver's license... this was covered in Dash's article at the top. If they have a license, they are presumed to be legally in the country.

Yay, more bullshit from Megan McArdle that totally misses the point.

I was wondering that myself. I swear, next time we hear of a serial killer on the loose, I'm going to ***** to high heaven when the profiling starts. I mean we have come so far as a people to not do that sort of thing!!

What point is that, Khross?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

And if thousands of innocent white males were being routinely detained and questioned to confirm that they aren't serial killers, you don't think anyone would have a problem with that?

Where do we start, RangerDave?

1. Are there fundamental problems with immigration policy in the United States?

2. Has the Federal Government failed to properly and intelligently secure our physical borders?

3. Is there an illegal immigration problem in Arizona and the Southwestern United States?

Take your pick, because she's doing the same thing everyone else is that opposes the Arizona Law: calling up bogeyman and red herrings to avoid addressing either of the glaring policy problems we're facing.

And if thousands of innocent white males were being routinely detained and questioned to confirm that they aren't serial killers, you don't think anyone would have a problem with that?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.