Arizona Comes to Indiana?

This past week, an Indiana Senate Committee approved a bill to crackdown on illegal immigration. The arguments are neither new nor surprising. According to its Senate sponsor, the bill is only attempting to "to put teeth into existing law.” According to Senator Delph, a Republican representing Carmel, Indiana, “[t]oday, we say no more to illegal immigration and we say we really mean it. We want the rule of law restored. Period.” And Bob Schrameyer, from a group called Citizens for Immigration Law Enforcement, told the Senate committee that "Employers have found it far too easy to hire illegal workers, which not only drives down wages to improve their bottom line, but take unfair advantage of a minority group."

In case anybody wondered, this push is about the rule of law and protecting the immigrants themselves from ruthless employers.  Of course.

The means of enforcement are also not new.  Under the new law, police who have "reasonable suspicion" that a person is here illegally while stopping them for another violation -- say, a traffic violation -- must ask for proof that the person is here legally.  The bill also requires that government meetings be conducted only in English and asks the federal government to reimburse the state for costs associated with illegal immigrants.  Illegal immigrants are also barred from receiving some state services, including in-state college  tuition.

I am happy to set aside for the moment the many enforcement problems associated with the law, and its real racial profiling dangers.  For now, I cannot help but wonder: is this the one issue that is holding back the state of Indiana?  Are its schools in order, its economy back on track, its budgets balanced, its citizens happy and content as they look to the future?  In other words, why legal immigration?  Why now?

Sadly, this is not specific to Indiana.  According to MSNBC and Telemundo, at least 15 states across the country are considering similar legislation.  

This is not a new story, by any means.  Nativism is not a new phenomenon.  Pull out your history books and read about the United States in the 1850's, or the late 19th Century, moments when waves of immigration brought out the worst in many.   These have not been proud moments in American history

It is impossible to read and see what is transpiring across so many states and not feel that history has a funny way of repeating itself.

I wonder what Luis Fortuño thinks about this.

Who Could Possibly be Against the Dream Act?

 This coming week, a showdown looms in Congress over passage of the DREAM Act.  This is a bill that provides permanent resident status to illegal residents who came into the country as minors and who have been admitted to college or have earned a college diploma or a general education development (G.E.D.) certificate.  The bill also provides that the applicant must be of  "a person of good moral character since the time of application" and neither inadmissible nor deportable under the immigration laws.

This bill has much to commend it.  The arguments should be familiar ones. For example, why in the world would a society choose to punish a child for decisions made by her parents?  In the context of the DREAM Act, why keep a child from attending college because his parents happened to have come into the United States illegally? Whatever else one thinks of the parents' initial choice, how could be possibly hold the child morally responsible for that decision?  Relatedly, once the child graduates from high school and/or enrolls in college, what is gained by keeping her from getting a college degree?  This is not much different from an H-1B work visa, which allows applicants from "specialty occupations" (such as accounting, engineering, doctors, nurses, and financial analysts, to name a few) the opportunity to apply for work in this country ahead of others.  The same policy would appear to apply in both situations.

If neither of these two arguments persuades you much, then think about the DREAM Act simply as a crude policy calculation.  That is, what is the downside of encouraging young children to apply themselves in school and graduate from high school, and to try to attend college?

When I first heard about this legislation, I remember thinking, who could possibly be against this bill, and what would their reasons be?

Silly me

The Immigration Debate, Public Opinion, and Winning Elections

According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, a majority of Americans support Arizona's recent immigration law even while they think it will lead to more racial profiling.  Moreover, a majority also thinks that the federal government must do more to protect the border and think illegal immigration is a serious problem. Unsurprisingly, the public is divided about what to do with the illegal immigrants already in the country. A recent USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a similarly conflicted public.


None of this should be terribly surprising.  Public sentiment appears to mirror long-standing public debates on this issue.  Even the first point -- support for the law in the face of the risk of racial profiling -- is easily explained.  This is the classic "tyranny of the majority" danger lurking in democratic societies.   I get that.  


 Far more important is the fallout of the law for the major political parties, both short and long term.


What to do, what to do . . . 

The Lessons of Immigration Reform in Arizona for the Court

Late last week, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law one of the toughest, if not the toughest, immigration bill in recent memory. The one feature of the new law that has received a great deal of attention requires police officers to stop anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Those who fail to produce a driver's license or documentation showing their legal status could be arrested. What this means for brown people in Arizona should be painfully clear. What could it possibly mean to reasonably suspect that a person is illegally in this country, particularly in the Southwest, other than by the color of her skin, her facial features, his surname or accent? This bill is, in a word, "shameful."

Governor Brewer is mindful of these concerns. Yet, she argued while signing SB 1070 into law:

"I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona. Because I feel so strongly on this subject, I worked for weeks with legislators to amend SB 1070, to strengthen its civil rights protections. That effort led to new language in the bill, language prohibiting law enforcement officers from “solely considering race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this section."

I do not doubt for a moment the governor's sincerity. But how can the law not lead to racial profiling? In fact, it may be said that the law encourages precisely that, the targeting of people within the state on the basis of race.


Responses to the law have ranged from direct protest to promises of litigation. I think both are important. But the more I think about litigation as an alternative, the more I keep coming back to the upcoming nomination of Justice Stevens' replacement on the Court.