Other States Following Arizona's lead

[Gil Hamilton]

You know, that really does suck. And I am sorry to say that if citizens end up obliged to carry an extra card or two in their wallets as part of making this effort work, I believe that it's a proportionate price to pay.

Although I would still much rather go after employers instead.

The problem is that it is only going to be applied to one group and that is likely going to be the most common result. The intent of this law was so that state troopers and local law enforcement could arrest people trooping over the southern mountains, but for whom they didn't actually have any specific evidence that they were illegal other than who the hell hikes in middle of the boonies of Arizona in groups like that who aren't illegal. The application applies everywhere.

This means that cops can, hypothetically, grab anyone if they don't carry identification that the offices that issue that identification specifically tell you NOT to carry on your person. No one carries around their birth certitificate, at the very least, because it's a pain in the ass to get another. Because the law doesn't spell out what standard of evidence is required, any cop can make it unreasonably high and arrest you. Well, not you; latinos.

That's why this law isn't going to survive the courts, because it's ASKING to be abused.

[Stravo]

A national Identity card could solve a lot of these issues of identification. It certainly would make some people's lives easier because those who don't drive who need ID no longer have to apply for non-driver's licenses and you don't have to risk taking your social security card and passport anywhere. One form of ID satisfies all your issues in terms of extra cards to carry around. You could even link it so that it can act like a state driver's license or passport.

[MKSheppard]

The solution's really simple. Even Maryland requires it now.

To get a DL or ID card......you need your social security card and proof of nationality (Birth certificate or VISA).

[General Zod]

The solution's really simple. Even Maryland requires it now.

To get a DL or ID card......you need your social security card and proof of nationality (Birth certificate or VISA).

Arizona already has those requirements for either one. The guy in the link I posted had a CDL and he still got detained until his wife brought his Birth Certificate.

[Kanastrous]

He had his fucking driver's license. How much more ID do you need?

Apparently under ICE's standard practice - what their spokesperson described as standard practice, anyway - sometimes you are expected to provide more.

And I love how you stress the "intent" of the law, when its effects are the only important thing.

I agree that effects trump intent. The law is aimed at obtaining positive effects, and we will not know how effective it is at delivering them until it has been implemented. I'm willing to tolerate a degree of unintended negatives in the pursuit of the positive. If you aren't, that's a position I can respect even if I don't share it.

If the effect of the law is that the police can stop anyone, any time, for whatever reason they feel like and imprison them if they don't have their proof of citizenship on hand, then that is a bad law, even if the "intent" of the law was to dispense hugs and puppies to everyone.

I don't believe that's the effect of the law. In any case, since the law has not yet taken effect we can't really know yet.

[General Zod]

Apparently under ICE's standard practice - what their spokesperson described as standard practice, anyway - sometimes you are expected to provide more.

Do you think he would have been required to provide more if he were a white Canadian tourist and not a latino?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Birth certificates are easily stolen and copied documents and should never be carried on your person, so as a practical matter the only thing for a latino to do in the United States is carry a United States passport at all times for internal travel thanks to this law and the ones like it coming down the pipe in other states, just like one's needing identification papers in the Soviet Union.

[Molyneux]

He had his fucking driver's license. How much more ID do you need?

Apparently under ICE's standard practice - what their spokesperson described as standard practice, anyway - sometimes you are expected to provide more.

"Standard practice" is not an excuse. If that IS standard practice, then those practices obviously need to be changed.

And I love how you stress the "intent" of the law, when its effects are the only important thing.

I agree that effects trump intent. The law is aimed at obtaining positive effects, and we will not know how effective it is at delivering them until it has been implemented. I'm willing to tolerate a degree of unintended negatives in the pursuit of the positive. If you aren't, that's a position I can respect even if I don't share it.

That's easy to say, if you don't know what the "unintended negatives" may be. Can you say that you support a law unflinchingly even if the negatives associated with it are monstrous?

If the effect of the law is that the police can stop anyone, any time, for whatever reason they feel like and imprison them if they don't have their proof of citizenship on hand, then that is a bad law, even if the "intent" of the law was to dispense hugs and puppies to everyone.

I don't believe that's the effect of the law. In any case, since the law has not yet taken effect we can't really know yet.

What do you mean?
The law explicitly gives the police the ability to require those they suspect of being illegal immigrants to prove their legal status - to show their papers. If you're a natural-born citizen but don't have your ID on you, what do you expect to happen if you piss off a cop in Arizona - or just "look suspicious"?

[Illuminatus Primus]

That's one of the ways the people who are up in arms about the law see it but it's written with the intent that if the police stop you for something legitimate they can inquire as to your immigration status. They aren't supposed to be stopping people solely to check for immigration status. The border patrol does do that, among other things, but most of the time sets up stops where they make everyone come through.

Oh, because cops don't already power trip at every opportunity? I don't want to feel because I LOOK Hispanic that if I happen to be driving a cheap car and helping my Hispanic relatives paint their house and we drive down the street for a burger, that I think to myself oh, we all better keep documentation on us. Its a de facto requirement that some people need to do extra work in order to avoid police harassment largely due to their ethnic identity and others do not. Red headed white people can whistle Dixie out of their ass without a piece of plastic to their ass, and I might not be able to. That's white privilege.

Its consistently been ruled a law is illegitimate if it functionally has only racist applications. And this law is one of the most extreme varieties I've ever seen. My Russian-born, immigrant girlfriend joked that if we go to Arizona it'll be me (the native-born, half-white, college-educated, fourth-generation citizen on my mother's [Hispanic] side) who has to make sure I have all the paperwork with me and not her.

Birth certificates are easily stolen and copied documents and should never be carried on your person, so as a practical matter the only thing for a latino to do in the United States is carry a United States passport at all times for internal travel thanks to this law and the ones like it coming down the pipe in other states, just like one's needing identification papers in the Soviet Union.

You should see the fight I had with my Republican asshole father on this, who of course drinks all that FNC Kool-Ade on SOCIALISM and COMMUNISM in ObamaCare but suddenly being asked for your papers while traveling domestically rattles none of these principled small-government libertarians. Strip away the vineer of propaganda and you see the truth: what resembles the USSR about Obama and what is really hated by those who shape media in culture is hurting profits and property, and they don't think its oppressive and intrusive state-intervention into personal life as bad at all (despite this ostensibly being the reason why you're supposed to think the USSR was so bad).

[Kanastrous]

Apparently under ICE's standard practice - what their spokesperson described as standard practice, anyway - sometimes you are expected to provide more.

Do you think he would have been required to provide more if he were a white Canadian tourist and not a latino?

Along our southern border, probably not. Latino people illegally entering the country is a known problem along the southern border; I would imagine that ICE agents looking for illegal crossings being made by Canadians would be looking more along the northern border.

[Kanastrous]

He had his fucking driver's license. How much more ID do you need?

Apparently under ICE's standard practice - what their spokesperson described as standard practice, anyway - sometimes you are expected to provide more.

"Standard practice" is not an excuse. If that IS standard practice, then those practices obviously need to be changed.

You're right, it's an observation and not an excuse. That said, I don't believe that the practice needs to be changed simply because it subjects a comparatively small number of people to additional inconvenience (even when the inconvenience is damned substantial).

And I love how you stress the "intent" of the law, when its effects are the only important thing.

I agree that effects trump intent. The law is aimed at obtaining positive effects, and we will not know how effective it is at delivering them until it has been implemented. I'm willing to tolerate a degree of unintended negatives in the pursuit of the positive. If you aren't, that's a position I can respect even if I don't share it.

That's easy to say, if you don't know what the "unintended negatives" may be. Can you say that you support a law unflinchingly even if the negatives associated with it are monstrous?

I don't find a small number of people being asked for additional ID, and being detained until they can show it "monstrous," considering the dimensions of the problem we're trying to remedy. If you do find that monstrous it just means that we have different standards when it comes to applying the "m" word.

If the effect of the law is that the police can stop anyone, any time, for whatever reason they feel like and imprison them if they don't have their proof of citizenship on hand, then that is a bad law, even if the "intent" of the law was to dispense hugs and puppies to everyone.

I don't believe that's the effect of the law. In any case, since the law has not yet taken effect we can't really know yet.

What do you mean?
The law explicitly gives the police the ability to require those they suspect of being illegal immigrants to prove their legal status - to show their papers. If you're a natural-born citizen but don't have your ID on you, what do you expect to happen if you piss off a cop in Arizona - or just "look suspicious"?

The law explicitly requires that the demand for residency etc papers may only take place in the course of officers' contact with a given person that has already been initiated because of a non-immigration-related matter. As the Federal law stands anyone here on some kind of paperwork is *already* obliged to keep it handy to show upon officers' demand (once only Federal, now state as well). This is not an expansion of rules requiring papers for people who were never before required to show them; it's simply an expansion of who is permitted to ask that they be shown, and those people may only ask if they are already in contact with the person in question over something non-immigration-status-related.

Sorry for the hideous text-and-quote editing; I'm at the tail end of lunch and I don't have time to make it pretty.

[General Zod]

You're right, it's an observation and not an excuse. That said, I don't believe that the practice needs to be changed simply because it subjects a comparatively small number of people to additional inconvenience (even when the inconvenience is damned substantial).

So you're okay with racist laws as long as they only inconvenience a minority? Would you like some ketchup with your foot?

[Kanastrous]

You're right, it's an observation and not an excuse. That said, I don't believe that the practice needs to be changed simply because it subjects a comparatively small number of people to additional inconvenience (even when the inconvenience is damned substantial).

So you're okay with racist laws as long as they only inconvenience a minority? Would you like some ketchup with your foot?

I don't find that it's racist to direct your attention more toward a group that is overwhelmingly representative of the people who are illegal entrants.

Basically you seem to be suggesting that because the border is in the main being violated by people of a particular ethnicity, we just have to sit back and let it happen because by enforcing the border in the most effective manner - that is, paying most of our attention to the largest group of people who are in reality crossing illegally - we'd be primarily affecting people of that ethnicity.

I don't give a damn where someone is from or what color their skin is, what religion they practice or what language they speak - if they enter and reside in obedience to the law. Conversely, if someone enters illegally I primarily want them out, regardless of their ethnicity or point of origin. If we had a problem on our northern border, primarily involving 'white' Canadians that approached the dimensions of the trouble on our southern border, I'd be equally eager to see similar measures put into place up north, affecting primarily 'white' people.

As it happens I'm sometimes mistaken for Latino (though I am central/eastern European by descent) and I can imagine getting stuck with 'how about some extra ID to back up this driver's license,' too. I don't know; I probably ought to start carrying my passport if I visit Arizona, myself. Which does not seem like a major inconvenience, actually.

[General Zod]

I don't find that it's racist to direct your attention more toward a group that is overwhelmingly representative of the people who are illegal entrants.

Basically you seem to be suggesting that because the border is in the main being violated by people of a particular ethnicity, we just have to sit back and let it happen because by enforcing the border in the most effective manner - that is, paying most of our attention to the people who are actually in reality crossing illegally - we'd be primarily affecting people of that ethnicity.

Given the track record so far it doesn't seem terribly effective at doing anything but harassing legal residents.

I don't give a damn where someone is from or what color their skin is, what religion they practice or what language they speak - if they enter and reside in obedience to the law. Conversely, if someone enters illegally I primarily want them out, regardless of their ethnicity or point of origin. If we had a problem on our northern border, primarily involving 'white' Canadians that approached the dimensions of the trouble on our southern border, I'd be equally eager to see similar measures put into place up north, affecting primarily 'white' people.

Or Arizona could grow a clue and start investigating employers on a heavy basis instead of harassing anyone with brown skin. I don't see that stricter ID laws will actually solve anything beyond making Arizona feel like they're being tough on something.

[Kanastrous]

I don't find that it's racist to direct your attention more toward a group that is overwhelmingly representative of the people who are illegal entrants.

Basically you seem to be suggesting that because the border is in the main being violated by people of a particular ethnicity, we just have to sit back and let it happen because by enforcing the border in the most effective manner - that is, paying most of our attention to the people who are actually in reality crossing illegally - we'd be primarily affecting people of that ethnicity.

Given the track record so far it doesn't seem terribly effective at doing anything but harassing legal residents.

I figure you're describing Federal enforcement since the state program hasn't started, yet.

I don't know. I have yet to find a breakdown that contrasts the number of righteous stops, arrests, deportations etc with the number of bad stops where a citizen or legal resident was detained by ICE past the few minutes required to check IDs. I'm open to the possibility that the numbers will bear out your argument, when I see them.

I don't give a damn where someone is from or what color their skin is, what religion they practice or what language they speak - if they enter and reside in obedience to the law. Conversely, if someone enters illegally I primarily want them out, regardless of their ethnicity or point of origin. If we had a problem on our northern border, primarily involving 'white' Canadians that approached the dimensions of the trouble on our southern border, I'd be equally eager to see similar measures put into place up north, affecting primarily 'white' people.

Or Arizona could grow a clue and start investigating employers on a heavy basis instead of harassing anyone with brown skin. I don't see that stricter ID laws will actually solve anything beyond making Arizona feel like they're being tough on something.

I'd be willing to try cutting most other enforcement programs, if we really came down like the wrath of god on employers. But since it looks unlikely that's going to happen - much as I wish it would - we're stuck with catch-as-catch-can.

If the program leads to fewer illegal entrants and fewer illegal residents and workers - it will have accomplished something. Neither of us know yet whether or not that will be the case.

[General Zod]

I don't find that it's racist to direct your attention more toward a group that is overwhelmingly representative of the people who are illegal entrants.

Basically you seem to be suggesting that because the border is in the main being violated by people of a particular ethnicity, we just have to sit back and let it happen because by enforcing the border in the most effective manner - that is, paying most of our attention to the people who are actually in reality crossing illegally - we'd be primarily affecting people of that ethnicity.

Given the track record so far it doesn't seem terribly effective at doing anything but harassing legal residents.

I figure you're describing Federal enforcement since the state program hasn't started, yet.

I don't know. I have yet to find a breakdown that contrasts the number of righteous stops, arrests, deportations etc with the number of bad stops where a citizen or legal resident was detained by ICE past the few minutes required to check IDs. I'm open to the possibility that the numbers will bear out your argument, when I see them.

I don't give a damn where someone is from or what color their skin is, what religion they practice or what language they speak - if they enter and reside in obedience to the law. Conversely, if someone enters illegally I primarily want them out, regardless of their ethnicity or point of origin. If we had a problem on our northern border, primarily involving 'white' Canadians that approached the dimensions of the trouble on our southern border, I'd be equally eager to see similar measures put into place up north, affecting primarily 'white' people.

Or Arizona could grow a clue and start investigating employers on a heavy basis instead of harassing anyone with brown skin. I don't see that stricter ID laws will actually solve anything beyond making Arizona feel like they're being tough on something.

I'd be willing to try cutting most other enforcement programs, if we really came down like the wrath of god on employers. But since it looks unlikely that's going to happen - much as I wish it would - we're stuck with catch-as-catch-can.

If the program leads to fewer illegal entrants and fewer illegal residents and workers - it will have accomplished something. Neither of us know yet whether or not that will be the case.

The amount of illegal immigrants has already been on decline without this "tough on IDs" program. Unsurprisingly it seems to be tied to the economy's performance. http://www.cis.org/illegalimmigration-shiftingtide

[Kanastrous]

That seems to suggest that as soon as the US economy turns around we'll start getting inundated, again. Better to get as secure as possible now while pressure is reduced, so as to be better able to stem the tide when our economy becomes more attractive to illicit labor again.

[General Zod]

That seems to suggest that as soon as the US economy turns around we'll start getting inundated, again. Better to get as secure as possible now while pressure is reduced, so as to be better able to stem the tide when our economy becomes more attractive to illicit labor again.

Or it could be a clue to start cracking down on employers so they don't have any incentive to hire illegals when the economy rebounds.

[Alphawolf55]

Does any of this stuff even indicate what they plan to do with any illegals after they're caught? I mean are we going to send them back, put them in jail?

[Kanastrous]

That seems to suggest that as soon as the US economy turns around we'll start getting inundated, again. Better to get as secure as possible now while pressure is reduced, so as to be better able to stem the tide when our economy becomes more attractive to illicit labor again.

Or it could be a clue to start cracking down on employers so they don't have any incentive to hire illegals when the economy rebounds.

Again I am in total agreement with you that coming down on employers is what we should be doing. But since it appears that we won't do it, we're left with the less-appetizing alternatives.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You mean alternatives that only inconvenience the poor, brown, and not politically-connected.

[Simon_Jester]

And anyone the police doesn't like and decides to suspect of being illegal immigrants.

I mean sure, the good cops won't do that. And sure, hopefully you'll be able to get released without too much trouble even if you don't happen to be carrying high-end identity documents like passports and birth certificates. But it's still one hell of a crimp in your day for an arbitrary exercise of police power.

This thing raises so many fundamental civil liberties issues that it's just ridiculous. Illegal immigration is a problem, but not one that's worth imposing widespread "must show passport or birth certificate on demand to any policeman who asks" laws over.

[Kanastrous]

You mean alternatives that only inconvenience the poor, brown, and not politically-connected.

Since unfortunately people who could be categorized that way appear to overlap with the people most likely to be here illicitly, yes.

I don't get off on this. It's bad.

But there is an algebra of necessity at work - unless one believes that the Arizona law is motivated by caprice or malevolence or racism-for-fun, which is not a belief that I share - the need to gain control of passage over the border and the presence of non-citizens in the state at this time outweighs the hurt feelings, insulted pride, wasted time and aggravation that a number of perfectly law-abiding and inoffensive people are very likely to experience.

Which is why prosecuting employers in the US is so much better in every way. It's fair. There's less jello-poundery. It's safer. It would make Americans more appealing hires.

So yeah, what they have is a pig wearing just enough lipstick to pass, at least, for me. I have enough trouble with it that I'm not going to offer any shit to anyone who's flat against seeing it stand.

[The Yosemite Bear]

actually BBC has a reporter who suggested that it's a backdoor jim crow law.

[Ethereal235]

To those saying there are no standards for what constitutes proper proof of US citizenship, the law actually does state what will be acceptable.

A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.

Source: http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070h.pdf

If someone's detained when they present a driver's license, that's opposed to the text of the law itself. I worry that this law will target Latinos prejudicially; even if no American citizen is arrested/deported, forcing a group of people that are 'reasonably suspicious,' a term that, when left undefined, can only really mean that someone looks like they're illegal (IE Latino), to endure constant harassment by police and be held to different standards is wrong. The bill itself does state that it will only be applied for "lawful contact," but even so, if it's a misdemeanor crime for a Latino to have left their ID at home while white citizens will just get a slightly bigger fine attached to a ticket, the law presents an undue burden to a specific demographic. It's disconcerting that many Americans seem ready to accept such inequalities (many even seem overjoyed) in order to curtail what is realistically a fairly modest political inconvenience.