A caveat right off the bat, I’ve given this about 20 minutes of thought prior to today, and about another 20 just now, so if I get some facts wrong or I sound ignorant then it’s because I’m wrong and ignorant. I only do this because my brother asked and I'm a sucker for someone asking me my opinion.
The racial profiling angle: There are a lot of Americans who are not white. This should come as no shock to anyone, but it’s still the best starting point and the one that most critics seem to be bringing up. As a cracker (i.e., white person) from West Virginia this may be the hardest part of the law to really understand. No one has ever asked me whether or not I’m a U.S. citizen as part of a traffic stop. The question is should U.S. citizens who do something as mild as rolling through a stop sign be required to prove their citizenship along with their insurance status? I think I’d be cooler with it if they just said they were going to do that to everyone, but that’s not practical so they have language that is something like “reasonable suspicion,” which is just the sort of vague language that can disguise racial profiling. It’s not that it’s an intrinsically racist law, but it could enable racist behavior.
The economic angle: I think the more important issue in this from the perspective of the typical American is that we have a lot of illegal immigrants in this country doing a lot of work. Some of it is probably work that Americans could and would do. Most of it is probably not. I’m not smart enough to tell you the economic impact of removing an undisclosed and imprecise portion of our illegal immigrant community, but I am smart enough to tell you that there will be one and it might not be good. This may not be the best time for a state to be making their own policy on one of the few issues that really needs to be decided on a federal level and applied uniformly. Just as a side-note, I’m not sure what the budget for the Arizona state police is, but they’re probably going to need a bump if they have any hope of enforcing this, uniformly or not.
The political angle: A lot of people would like to blame immigrants for problems that occur in our country. Some of this is legitimate, some of it is over-blown, and some of it is probably unfounded fear. These people will vote for someone based on a tough stance on immigration, and perhaps more importantly, could be swayed to vote against someone who appears to have a weaker stance even if that stance is more practical. Other people are so concerned about the rights of immigrants that they could see any change in enforcing immigration law as discriminatory. These people will be voting against the Arizona governor, and probably lots of other politicians too. Politicians know this, and they make important decisions based on this information. It is a sad and true fact of our political system. Some people will vote for their own job rather than what is best for the common good. Well, put it that way, a lot of people who aren’t politicians would probably do the same thing.
My take: I think this state law came about because of a real need for a clear policy. That does not excuse them for making a half-assed policy without clear guidelines that could lead to unfair treatment of American citizens, but I understand why they tried. I hope this will turn into a blip on the radar that is erased by the presence of a comprehensive federal immigration policy that balances removing the truly dangerous people from our country while making every effort to ensure the fair treatment of people who have every right to be here and live as free as I do. Now, how free do I actually live? That’s another topic for another day.
