One of our many problems endemic to the American political system is that minority gangs of highly intolerant, ignorant and often racist groups such as the NRA, Christian Coalition, Minutemenare often able through mindless populist fervor to elect highly intolerant, ignorant and often racist judges and politicians and pass highly intolerant, ignorant and often racist laws. RJ
December 18, 2007
Blazing Arizona
New York Times Editorial
On Jan. 1, Arizona intends
to become the first state to try to muscle its way out of its
immigration problems on its own. That is when, barring a last-minute
setback in court, it is to begin enforcing a new state law that harshly
punishes businesses that knowingly hire undocumented immigrants. It is
a two-strike law, suspending a business’s license on the first offense
and revoking it on the second. It is the strictest
workplace-enforcement law in the country.
We have always said that workplace laws should be enforced
vigorously — as part of a comprehensive, nationwide immigration system
that doesn’t just punish, but tries to actually solve the problems that
foster and sustain the breaking of immigration laws. The boosters of
the Arizona law, including the Minutemen border vigilantes who have
made “January First!” an anti-immigrant rallying cry, have a much
narrower goal: the biggest purge of illegal immigrants in the Southwest
since the federal government’s Operation Wetback in 1954.
If that happens, the immigrants will take a big chunk of Arizona’s
growth and economic vitality with them — and not necessarily back
across the international border. The collateral damage will be severe
as citizens and legal immigrants are also thrown out of work, as
businesses struggle to find workers in a state with a 3.3 percent
unemployment rate and as sleazy employers move more workers off the
books, the better to abuse and exploit them. And the national problem
of undocumented immigration will be no closer to a solution.
There are many compassion-and-common-sense criticisms of Arizona’s
Fair and Legal Employment Act: stories about families torn apart,
breadwinners deported and citizen children on public assistance. They
make little headway with the law-and-order crowd. Nor does the fact
that many hard-line defenders of workplace enforcement show a lopsided
devotion to federal laws; they seldom complain when employers abuse
undocumented immigrants and steal their wages, even though those
violations worsen job conditions and pay for American workers, too.
For now, let’s just point out that Arizona’s plunge into
enforcement-only immigration policy highlights the folly and inadequacy
of that approach, particularly when it is left to a crazy quilt of
state laws. America is a country where millions of illegal immigrants
have entered for years all but invited and mostly not pursued. They
have become integral to our economy, although now — thanks to harsher
enforcement and the defeat of comprehensive immigration reform in
Congress — most have no way to become legal, no options except slipping
back into destitution on the other side of the border.
There is no way for Arizona or any other state to get businesses
back on a legal footing without exacting a great economic and human
toll.
It could be that Arizona’s enforcement of the law will be calm and
measured. But we worry about Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix
and two-thirds of the state’s population. Maricopa’s county attorney,
Andrew Thomas, and county sheriff, Joe Arpaio, are prone to
media-driven stunts. Sheriff Arpaio makes a show of his meanness,
hounding and humiliating prisoners and forming his deputies into squads
that check people’s clothes and accents before demanding their papers.
Arizona is home to many moderate politicians, like Gov. Janet
Napolitano, who were all too aware of the bill’s problems, and yet it
became law. Many say the Minutemen and their allies had offered an
ultimatum: approve this bill or face a citizen’s initiative on the 2008
ballot that would be even harsher and blunter, and all but impossible
to repair. That promise was reneged on; petitions for the Minutemen’s
initiative are being collected now.
As Arizona exacts its punishment on the undocumented workers who
have made it so prosperous, it runs the risk of proving itself tough
but not smart.