Thursday, July 29, 2010

Where is Immigration Reform Headed?


Now that portions of the Arizona law was blocked, where is the law headed next?  

The blocking of the law doesn't appear to be dampening the spirits of local law enforcement in Arizona at all.  Of course, before yesterdays ruling, the Sheriff of Maricopa County was encouraging demonstrators to follow the law and work within the spirit of the law to make changes if they disagree with the legislation.

Today, despite a Judge's ruling striking key provisions of the law, the Sheriff is still planning a sweep of immigrant neighborhoods.  It begs the question of what they are looking for is presumably they shouldn't be asking immigrants for their papers?  I suppose only the protesters are encouraged to follow the law, local law enforcement doesn't need any such reminders to do so.

In light of the ferocious debate on both sides of the issue, it's interesting to consider the path that Arizona is headed:

So, let's just require a sector of our population to carry papers because we have some suspicion that certain ethnic groups enter the country illegally.

Of course, we must require that local law enforcement have some reasonable suspicion other than race to detain people and request to see their papers. This is a quandary that is not easily solved. How does one suspect that a person is an undocumented immigrant without taking into account their race?

The answer is obvious. We should have all persons of a particular ethnic group wear some kind of symbol which is easily visible on their outer clothing to indicate that they are lawful immigrants. Of course, it would be a serious felony for an undocumented immigrant to forge such a symbol. It would also be a crime for a legal immigrant to give assistance to an undocumented immigrant.

This would make it simplicity itself to spot the undocumented immigrants easily and move them into the local immigration detention facilities. It would also discourage any lawful immigrants from giving help to their undocumented friends or relatives.

In addition, the lawful immigrants who assist their undocumented brethren could similarly be detained and sent to prison or perhaps housed in a detention facility for aiding and abetting.

In order to enforce these laws, we could make it a crime for all the lawful immigrants to go into public without wearing their immigration symbol boldly where law enforcement can easily view. If it is obscured in any manner, the local law enforcement can detain the person for attempting to hide their immigration status.


And so on...

Of course, this is a hypothetical situation that wouldn't ever really happen, could it?  Any history buffs in the audience?



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