So What's in the Arizona Bill Everyone's Talking About?

Friday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 into law, and across the state of Arizona, I can already feel the fear of the immigrant and minority communities of Arizona rising. I don't say that as an exaggeration, because there is nothing in this law that will make the people of Arizona feel "safer." Your immigration status, along with other aspects of your private life, are now the business of local police.

Let's review some of the bill's most draconian provisions:

The first provision of the bill requires officials and agencies on the state and local levels to make "a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person" if they come into contact with someone they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe is undocumented.

This gives any Arizona law enforcement officer free reign to determine who to ask (or not ask) about their immigration status. And while Governor Brewer has said that almost-guaranteed racial profiling will not be tolerated, what is defined as "reasonable suspicion"? Common sense dictates that if I, as a police officer, see blond-haired, blue-eyed Sue standing on the street corner, I won't think much of it. But if I see caramel-complexioned Juan Miguel, I now claim "reasonable suspicion" to ask Juan about his immigration status.

Now consider the possibility that Sue is actually a Canadian undocumented immigrant, and Juan a U.S. citizen and a third-generation Nicaraguan — what then? The bill fails because Sue "slipped through the cracks" and Juan, as a citizen, is now unjustly and arbitrarily discriminated against.

Say you're neither an undocumented immigrant or a U.S. citizen: you're a legal permanent resident. The anti-immigrant provisions of this bill pose problems for you, too, by defining the crime of trespassing as being present anywhere in Arizona without carrying documents proving legal immigration status.

Many permanent residents don't carry their green cards on them at all times for the sake of not losing such an important document (it's like always carrying your passport), but now if they live in Arizona, they will be forced to. If you forget your green card at home one morning, and are stopped by an officer for whatever reason, say a broken taillight, you are guilty of trespassing, regardless of the fact that you are indeed a permanent resident! To boot, you now also have a criminal record with a class 1 misdemeanor.

Next, we have the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the key provisions. Under provision 3, an undocumented immigrant "convicted of a violation of state or local law [is] to be transferred immediately to the custody of ICE or Customs and Border Protection, on discharge from imprisonment or assessment of any fine that is imposed." And provision 13 denies undocumented immigrants the right of all other prisoners for "suspension or commutation of sentence or release on any basis until the sentence imposed is served."

So by committing a non-violent offense — which, remember, in Arizona, can simply be "trespassing" — family members can disappear into the prison/detention system, with all means of getting out closed off. And if family members approach local officials for information about their loved one's whereabouts, they too, are subject to questioning and risk arrest.

Finally, this legislation is an assault on Arizona businesses. The Legal Arizona Workers Act, enacted in 2007, makes it mandatory for all Arizona employers to use E-Verify. This bill goes even further by making it a felony for not using E-Verify. Yet E-Verify has been under constant criticism since its inception for its error rates (from 4.1 - 10%) and overall ineffectiveness, not to mention the additional expense that many small businesses may not be able to afford.

There are plenty of other serious problem with this bill; I've only offered an example of some of the worst. Look: if you are a criminal, engaged in drug smuggling or other acts that negatively affect the community, you should rightly be a police target. But this law blatantly focuses instead on those immigrants who have done nothing wrong, who lack legal status not because they do not want it or are too lazy to pursue it (a myth that has been pushed for far too long), but because there is no avenue to legal status for far too many of these immigrants. They cannot "get in line" because there is no line for them.

Our immigration system has failed them and no one has the balls to do anything about it; instead, Arizona works to find harsh new ways punish them. Furthermore, the bill legitimizes everything that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has ever done — how is that okay, not to mention legal? One thing we can expect to see in the near future: constitutional challenges to this egregious law.

Photo credit: Banspy