Dio, your opposition to this law is right; let me make that clear from the start. However, you don’t do yourself or our cause any favors when you put forward an absolute assertion like the one I have bolded above.
There is no argument that the law carries within its wording any safeguards against the harrassment of citizens. But this is a completely different statement than your assertion, which can be interpreted as a claim that the purpose of the law is to harrass citizens, and nothing else. That you do not intend for this interpretation to flow from your words is irrelevant. The very fact that they can be so interpreted is an invitation to your opponents to pull the debate into “Dio is making things up” territory.
The people who support this law are going to be plenty happy to drag you down into the mud of obfuscation and talking past one another. You don’t need to attach a handle to yourself to make their task easier.
Are we reading the same thread? Where’d you get that idea?
This thread is about the overly broad, wrong-headed, simplistic, and dangerous method by which this legislation seeks to identify illegal aliens. This law will inevitably result in United States citizens being asked by Arizona police to prove their right to be in the country, and United States citizens being detained because they don’t happen to have their birth or naturalization certificate in their pocket.
Citizens of the U.S. are not even required to carry ID, let alone a proof of citizenship, and this law is a cure worse than the disease.
Heh, well, actually, in post #30 I asked what the big deal was about illegal immigration.
Possibly this is being taken as a blanket approval of open borders and Bricker is assuming that because I said it, almost everyone must believe it, because I’m such a powerful influence on the board and the Opinions of Ekers (trademark pending) are like unto the word of God, verily.
Out of curiosity, when was the last time someone proposed a law whose impact you had reservations about, where you took this attitude? Seems to me, in our various interactions on this board, that when a law has a potential consequence which you deem to be unwanted, you’re very proactive about repealing the law, or preventing it from becoming law. It appears you’re holding people on the other side of the political fence to a different standard than you hold yourself to, if I may be so bold.
I’m cool with it. Heck, I’m cool with boning 14 year-olds, as was perfectly legal in Canada (with some exceptions) until 2008, when the age of consent was raised to 16. The raise was supposedly to clamp down on internet predators, but the issue is so overhyped that I’m honestly unsure how much of a problem it actually was.
Coincidentally, I’m honestly unsure how much a problem illegal immigration is. I know that some of the illegals are engaged in other crimes like drug dealing and such, but how big a percentage of the illegals just want to work and live a better life than their home countries offer?
Shit, he’s against changing the laws to allow same sex couples to marry because at some unknown point in the future it might have some unknown repercussion of an unknown magnitude. Cite.
In other words, he’s full of shit and so long as a law supports his angry, bullshit little prejudices he’s all for it.
That’s all most of them want. It’s a traditional strain of thought of some in the U.S. that immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are going to ruin the neighborhood. One would think that after all these years, and after the demonstrated contributions to the nation of the Irish immigrants, the Chinese immigrants, the German immigrants, the . . . shit, I could go on forever . . . that these attitudes and prejudices would have gone by the wayside. One would be wrong.
I don’t think so. The situation with illegals is out of hand. We need reform across the board. The federal government has not done its job for decades. One of the fundamental duties of the government is to protect our borders. I find this beyond the pale, but there you have it. So, states and communities are left to deal with a problem. Either they do, or it doesn’t get addressed, and their communities continue to suffer with overcrowded emergency rooms and classrooms. My response was to Dio’s and other’s knee-jerk reaction that this will result in abuse. Some have even, laughably, proposed tactic to ensure abuse. You, know, just to make sure the abuse we all know will be there will be there. My point was not a reason for passing the law, but a response to someone inventing a reason why it’s a bad idea. Those are two very different things.
I’m not sure how this relates to my stance on SSM, which I assume is what you’re referring to. Or why it matters. Don’t get me wrong, I know why you bring it up, but what it has to do with the merits of the Arizona law is beyond me.
I hope it’s not too impertinent to ask for a definition of “out of hand” with some sort of statistical backing, preferably contrasting the current situation to some earlier period that was not, by your definition, out of hand - possibly going back several decades to when the federal government was indeed doing its job, as you define it
Arizona is usurping federal powers to regulate immigration and interstate commerce. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has, in the past, made agreements with local law enforcement agencies to help perform limited immigration enforcement under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, no such agreement has been concluded on a state-wide basis. Part of this agreement includes special training for local law enforcement members who are to serve in this capacity, which grants them access to an ICE database to check on a suspect’s immigration status.
ICE has had such an agreement with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office previously, but has recently decided not to renew the agreement with MCSO, outside of checking on the status of those who are booked into country jails. So, that means that country sheriffs and other law enforcement officers - without ICE or other federal authorization and/or training - are now charged with enforcing federal immigration law. Not to mention the law itself sets up a Catch-22 dichotomy:
So police officers are required to determine an individual’s immigration status when they have reasonable suspicion regarding it, but they cannot solely consider race or national origin. This means that while being Hispanic cannot solely be considered basis for having a reasonable suspicion as to the person’s immigration status, being Hispanic AND speaking Spanish could perfectly constitute reasonable suspicion.
“Stoppe with my family as I’m walking into a restaurant…” This hypothetical fails to lay out the basis for the stop. The law clearly specifies that it applies to legal stops, so I have two different possible assumptions here: I am detained illegally, with no valid predicate suspicion, or I am detained legally, for some reasonable, articulable suspicion that you failed to identify.
To save me typing, why don’t you lay out which question you’re asking, and I’ll answer it.
OK. I suppose we’ll see. It seems to me that Arizona has the plenary police power to make it a separate crime to reside in Arizona without legal national residence, and do so without intruding on the separate Congressional power of regulating national immigration. They are not attempting to change or modify the national status; they are using that national status as the predicate factual basis for defining their own crime.
But I concede your view is possible.
It’s quite a distance from a slam-dunk, but I grant the possibility.
I loked but couldn’t find any charts detailing illegal immigration numbers by year going back more then a decade or two. But Reagan’s irresponsible and boneheaded move to grant amnesty to near 3 million shows that the problem had been out of control for quite a while. We should have 0 illegal immigrants here. That’s surely impossible, but that should be the goal. I support a tightly secured border, giving us the ability to close the spigot completely or open it and admit as many thousands or millions that serve our needs—legally! I support any community’s right to improve their community by making it difficult for people to reside there who shouldn’t be there in the first place. So, while I’m unable to answer your question in the way I think you were hoping, I hope that gives you an idea. The problem is no doubt at least three or four decades in the making.
It’s unclear to me just how the verification of citizenship will go.
It’s beyond cavil that, in connection with a legal stop, law enforcement may require you to identify yourself. This identification can include the requirement for you to truthfully provide your name and date of birth. Yes?
It doesn’t seem outrageous for the police to ask for your social security number, although of course (so far as I know) there is no requirement for you to have one. But if you do, and provide it, it’s very likely that a quick database query can confirm that your SSN matches your name and DOB. That should end the inquiry.
If someone denies having a SSN, then a short additional investigative detention is probably justified to do a further query for any names and dates of birth registered with the SSA.
Obviously, if this is a driver, then there IS a requirement that he has valid ID.
As has been observed by several posters above, I would myself be a possible candidate for investigation: obviously Hispanic surname and appearance, possibly in the company of family members who spoke no English. But I believe the risk of more than a slight delay is virtually non-existent.
It’s a shame that it’s come to this, isn’t it? There have been many perfectly good opportunities to discourage illegal immigration in ways that are humane and consistent with the Constitution and American values, but we’ve just never been able to bring ourselves to try them. Pressure and/or help the Mexican government create economic opportunities for Mexicans in Mexico? Couldn’t do it. Swiftly deport the truly dangerous criminals among illegal immigrants? Couldn’t do it. Stop dangling the prospect of another massive amnesty over those who are thinking about jumping the border? Couldn’t do it. Stop the policy of birthright citizenship? Couldn’t do it, US v. Kim Wong Ark and all that. Impose significant penalties on businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants? Couldn’t do it. Count illegal immigrants against the total number of legal immigrants accepted from each country? Couldn’t do that either. Well, now you’ve gotta carry ID in Arizona or they’ll put you in the clink. Maybe you should have anticipated this
Immigration in the US is like renting out a party hall. The local stamp-collectors’ society, 20 strong, rents your hall for their weekly meeting. Things go well for a few weeks, then you notice more and more people showing up. You ask the stamp collectors to please limit the number of people they invite, but they say it just wouldn’t be right. Besides, what do you have against stamp collectors? Pretty soon there are a hundred people at each meeting, and they’re parking their cars on the lawn, generating noise complaints, and their trash is all over the floor because they’ve filled all the trash cans. You also notice a few of them are not trading stamps, but rather are doing heroin in the men’s room. You tell the stamp collectors that they must put some limits on who they invite, and accept responsibility for any damage or criminal activity, and they again say, what do you have against stamp collecting? What kind of a nut is against stamp collecting? Finally. you’ve had enough and you tell them their rental agreement is canceled, and there will be cops waiting at the door if they show up again. And they’re shocked, shocked at such draconian actions.
A question for supporters of this law: how many citizens or lawful residents (green card and work visa holders, etc.) of the country will have to be harassed and/or detained before the overbroad nature of this law becomes a problem for you?