NY Times Editorial on SB1070 and a few additional comments

The editorial below is a repost of a NY Times Editorial that can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30fri1.html

My comments are below in italics.

April 30, 2010
Editorial

Stopping Arizona

A fight is brewing over Arizona’s new law that turns all of the state’s Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspects. And this is not a local fight. The poison is spreading; there is talk in Texas of passing a version of the Arizona statute.

President Obama has called the law “misguided” and promised to keep an eye on it. But when racial separation finds a foothold in any of the 50 states, the president needs to do more than mildly criticize. He should act. Here’s a partial but urgent to-do list:

DEFEND CIVIL RIGHTS The Justice Department needs to challenge this law forcefully in court. The statute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant. Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law but says she doesn’t know what an illegal immigrant looks like, leaving that to others who think they do.

The Justice Department knows what kinds of abuse that invites. It is already investigating the sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, who raids Hispanic neighborhoods in and around Phoenix. His deputies demand people’s papers based on the shirts and boots they wear.

Federal law requires noncitizens to carry documents but does not empower police officers to stop anyone they choose and demand to see papers. Arizona’s attempt to get around that by defining the act of standing on its soil without papers as a criminal act is repellent.

STOP ARIZONA COLD Arizona’s scheme will rely on federal databases to determine immigration status. It will also need the cooperation of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, in accepting detainees. ICE says its priorities are dangerous criminals and fugitives, not the peaceful workers and families who are overwhelmingly the targets of the new law. In that case, ICE will deny Arizona authorities data, cooperation and scarce resources.

TAKE BACK IMMIGRATION POLICY The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot make their own immigration laws. The Arizona debacle gives the Obama administration another chance to make it clear that the nation’s immigration policy cannot be left to a ragged patchwork of state and local laws.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama praised a federal court’s decision striking down a law in Hazleton, Pa., that made it illegal to hire or rent housing to undocumented immigrants. To start forcefully asserting the central federal role in immigration, the administration should rescind a once-secret 2002 memo from President George W. Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, that declared that state and local police had “inherent authority” to make immigration arrests. It should have done that long ago. It should also weigh in against another reckless Arizona law, now before the Supreme Court, that revokes the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The administration’s actions elsewhere have sent the wrong message. Janet Napolitano once vetoed extremist immigration-enforcement bills as Arizona’s governor, but as the homeland security secretary she defends the use of state and local police as “force multipliers.” Ms. Napolitano needs to end dangerous experiments like the 287(g) program and Secure Communities, which hand over vital federal duties to untrained, unsupervised local deputies, openly enabling racial-profiling and undermining community policing and public safety.

These steps are no substitute for immigration reform, the future of which seems pretty murky after Mr. Obama started gingerly backing away this week. But the federal government must react forcefully to the Arizona statute. Is our core belief still the welcome and assimilation of newcomers? Arizona has given one answer. It’s time for Mr. Obama to give the other.

There are two key points that I want to talk about in this editorial. The first is, the fact that SB1070 "turns all of the state’s Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspects." No person should be considered a criminal suspect and subject to additional scrutiny just because of their skin color and they fact that they "look" like members of a certain ethnic group. This goes against the very principles that our country was founded on that "All men are created equal." This law creates two statuses of people, those who are automatically criminal suspects and those who are not.

One potential solution to this part of the bill was proposed by the vice-mayor of Phoenix when he wrote on his blog,

My first recommendation is to have our Phoenix Police Department require
proof of citizenship from every individual that is stopped. It does not
matter if they are Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic,
European or of any other race or ethnicity.

You can read the rest of his blog by clicking here. Obviously this is one way to avoid racial profiling and still fulfill this law, but I just don't believe it is a reasonable solution, which is why the law must be repealed or challenged in court.

The second thing I like about this editorial is that it is a strong call to action to the federal government. The federal government has been flirting with immigration reform for nearly a decade, yet no one has had the guts and political will to do anything about it. No individual wants to move on this issue because it is so divisive, but that lack of action has led to a state law that is more broken than the problems it is attempting to fix.

My final point on this whole issue I stated in response to some previous comments, but want to restate here on the blog. Being in the country without proper documentation is a crime. I don't disagree with that point. And we need to deal with the issue, I don't disagree with that point either.

However, simply being in the country without proper documentation does not constitute a threat to public safety. I really want law enforcement to be focusing their limited attention and resources on crimes that are an actual threat to public safety like rape, murder, kidnapping and assault.

If anyone, documented or undocumented, is committing a crime that is a legitimate threat to public safety, that is where I want the police to be focused. But a person living in the United States without proper documentation does not directly undermine public safety, so while it is illegal and I wish the federal government would deal with it, passing a state law that makes anyone with brown skin a criminal suspect is not the right way to do it.