Arizona's New Immigration Law Means Increased Crime

Reason #4,893 why people should oppose Arizona's draconian new immigration law: the law means that officers will be too busy harassing brown people to respond to actual crimes.

That's probably not what proponents had in mind when making the case for Arizona's new law, which requires all Arizonans to carry ID cards at all times. The law prescribes immediate detention for any undocumented person convicted of any crime, including that of walking around without an ID. It requires police officers to ask the immigration status of all people they come in contact with — essentially mandating racial profiling.

The law's unintended consequences? Higher crime rates across the state, thanks to the fact that police will now be distracted by wasteful immigration busts, when they should be out in the community solving crimes.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's track record in Phoenix, AZ is a case study for how this will look. Since Arpaio's office started focusing on immigration raids outside of its jurisdiction, it's also been failing to solve real crimes. A study by the Goldwater Institute found that Arpaio's shop closed three times as many cases without resolution as it did with arrest.

Another blow to law enforcement is the increased difficulty of investigating cases, now that police are viewed as a shadow immigration agency. For exactly this reason, most jurisdictions around the country do exactly the opposite of what the new Arizona law demands: they forbid police officers from asking about immigration status during an investigation. The police exist to keep us safe and to solve crimes — that's hard to do when a whole community is afraid of you.

As Joel Jacobsen, an assistant attorney general in New Mexico, told the Christian Science Monitor: “This obviously puts police in an impossible situation because it requires them to pursue two goals simultaneously: to enforce the immigration laws; and to enforce the criminal laws, keep the peace, provide assistance, and all the other ordinary tasks of police officers. Which goal should they pursue?"

I've focused here on the reasons I believe the new law will directly contribute to a rise in crime by keeping law enforcement officers from doing their jobs. But there are deeper factors at play here that could add up to increased crime and poverty, as well. By encouraging racial profiling and requiring ID cards, Arizona is further criminalizing minorities and poor people. The law means more law-abiding Latinos will have more contact with the criminal justice system in Arizona. This means kids will see their parents harassed by cops, and they'll grow up learning to resent and fear the police. Accordingly, they'll be more likely to commit crime, and less likely to report it.

By criminalizing an entire state in a desperate attempt to catch undocumented immigrants, Arizona has opened a Pandora's Box of misguided resources and community distrust. This law is a bad idea for so many reasons.

Photo Credit: DREAMActivist