How much stress?
Jobs that are paid in cash mean a loss of payroll taxes.
This has been a very informative thread, thank you to everyone for your contributions - particularly Bricker.
What percentage of illegal aliens are paid in cash?
I don’t know. How many aliens are collecting social services? Unless you are able to verify legal status these things can’t be verified.
How financially damaged is the state of California? How much of this is due to a loss of taxes and a payout of social services? These are questions that should have answers.
Just looking at the criminal side of it: 20% of the federal prisoners are non-citizens. That’s down from 27% in 2000. Half of those convictions are for drug offenses. forget the sensational crimes of murder or rape that make the news, these are real figures. We’re paying for their incarceration.
Add in the problem of getting a driver’s license because it is becoming a mandated form of verified identity and you have unlicensed/uninsured drivers who will likely flee an accident leaving the victim stuck with the bill. There are a lot of costs involved with an unchecked flow of illegal aliens and in this century we have the added problem of terrorists walking across the border with little chance of being identified because it’s politically incorrect to enforce illegal entry into this country.
Was that ever proven? Last I heard, no one knew who killed him, but of course everyone was assuming it was “an illegal.” According to your article, the only evidence is the victim allegedly saying “illegal alien” on the radio sometime earlier that day.
So should we start deporting waitstaff and pizza delivery drivers? Because I can assure you, they only report a small fraction of their actual income. And forget about dishwashers in non-corporate restaurants, no matter where they were born. A whole hell of a lot of landscapers and handymen, too, including white Americans.
I think Arizona made a dumb move. Profiling will certainly happen. Some people who have been here for generations probably don’t have immigration papers . How do they prove it to a cop who finds "reasonable suspicion.’ They could be taking innocent people in custody until the Federal Government determines status. How long will that take?
Immigration is under Federal control. It is the responsibility of Congress. Arizona doing this is a usurpation of federal powers. Then if the Arizona police drag someone off to jail the feds have to stop and go to the Arizona jail and pick him up. (assuming he has been determined an illegal). I am sure they will be happy to do that.
Finally they have the fun of civilians suing the police because they think the cops are lax on enforcement. There are enough nuts that will try to make money off the law. The cops may be facing lots of bad suits that will waste a lot of tax dollars…
58% of that 20% is for immigration-related offenses, a fact often missed in the constant harping by Lou Dobbs, FAIR and the like about how many federal prisoners are non-citizens:
Half of them were charged with a drug offense, not convicted of a drug offense, per your own cite.
Funny how they never bring up the number of noncitizens in state prisons, isn’t it? That’s because it’s about 6% overall (varies wildly by state, of course).
In case you’re wondering, the number of federal prisoners is a relative drop in the bucket to the state correctional inmate population - 200,000 to 1.4 million or so.
If they’re illegal, yes.
In case you missed my point, we’re paying to incarcerate them.
You call them suspects. What are they suspected of at this point?
True, but since the new law requires officers to make reasonable inquiries into citizenship questions, would it not be reasonable to enforce otherwise “let it go” offenses to comply with this new law?
You quoted the loitering statute. It’s not much of a stretch for an officer to claim that these people were “begging” outside of Home Depot. At least not enough of a stretch to start an inquiry.
I agree that simply by standing you aren’t breaking laws, but how about driving? Drive two miles and I’ll bet you or any other poster that I can cite at least two violations that a cop could use for a stop, and in Texas at least, that would be grounds for a custodial arrest.
Mopery. :rolleyes:
By “not much of a stretch” do you mean “a lie?”
In order to show reasonable suspicion, the officer must point to specific, articulable facts. Begging involves asking for money. If they’re not asking for money, what facts will the officer point to to establish they are asking for money?
Yes, that’s true. And it was true last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
But this law won’t force police to make pretextual traffic stops, will it?
So we have two cases: a police department that wants to run the illegals out, and one that does not. And we have two times: before the new law, and after the new law. Let’s look at all four cases:
Police don’t want / before the new law – no pretextual traffic stops
Police don’t want / after the new law – no pretextual traffic stops
Police DO want / before the new law – pretextual traffic stops allowed; inquiry into immigration status allowed
Police DO want / after the new law – pretextual traffic stops allowed; inquiry into immigration status allowed
So… what do you see as changing with the new law? Why is the evil of being able to do pretextual traffic stops laid at the feet of this law?
Could be worse. Could be Dopery.
FYI, here is one example of an article outlining the potential constitutional issues with the law, written by someone who seems to have done a fair amount of research.
Also, my boss just forwarded a press release from MALDEF and the ACLU, announcing that they will hold a news conference on the steps of the Arizona Capitol at 11:00 today announcing a challenge to the new law on constitutional grounds. Presumably both those organizations have done their homework and believe that there is suficient basis to expend their limited resources on a lawsuit. I’d link to the release, but it doesn’t seem to be posted on either organization’s website yet.
Boy, that didn’t take long.
And we’re off and running with the lawsuits.
And not one of the points raised in that article identifies a per se problem – all of them are speculative, concerning how the law might be enforced. All of them are couched in the subjunctive or the speculative:
(My comment - if the law is intended to allow the state to do as much as it can constitutionally get away with… then it is intended to be constitutional. This may make it unwise, and it may be a ‘problem,’ but it’s not violative of the constitution.
“Perhaps.” Conveniently omitting the fact that another section of the law specifically says that it may not violate constitutional rights.
“Might.” And, again, this is saying it may be enforced unfairly, not that it is per se violative.
That may arise.
As the article explains, “deferred action” is essentially prosecutorial decision by DHS - you fit into one of these categories that doesn’t change your immigrations status, but we’re going to let you be anyway.
And the complain is?
Arizona may not exercise its discretion the same way.
First, of course, you’d need to show that Arizona did in fact procede against someone who was in a “deferred action” status.
So this is, again, another “Oh, this might be applied poorly!” complaint.
Moreover, person in “deferred action” do not have their time counted against them when calculating unlawful presence time. So their presence is possible under the Arizona law, as the author concedes:
AGAIN. The risk that his law will be applied pporly is the complaint, NOT that it’s invalid on the face.
I’m going to stop parsing it now. If you, or anyone, can point to any place in this article that advances an argument about how the law is invalid as written, let me know.
If this law is used as justification to round up anyone with brown skin and an accent, of course I will oppose those actions. Bu that’s not what the law says. The entire article is a series of hand-wringing speculation about how the law might be applied in a bad way. I agree: the law might be applied in a bad way.
So far, it hasn’t.
One lawsuit raises the preemption question. Another seems to complain that it could hinder police investigations, somehow, but the article provides no specifics.
I would have thought that was obvious. Let’s pretend you’re an undocumented worker, and you witness a murder.
Would the new law perhaps make you a trifle hesitant to come forward?