The news about Arizona's new law is all over the place, so I wanted to take the time to examine the situation. If you haven't heard about it, here is a link to a NY Times article providing background. Here's the summary of the law that this article provides:
It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials.
This law also makes it illegal to be caught without papers such as a green card or drivers license for citizenship. This in itself has several implications- for example, a girl in the AIS day discussion told others that she, like many other people, often forgets things, and that it might not be fair to place misdemeanor charges on someone who is forgetful or disorganized. That being said, I'm not arguing that immigration reform isn't needed; it takes 15 years for some people to legally enter the country, and millions of people try to enter illegally every year.
The argument of people that disagree with the new law is that it might encourage racial and ethnic discrimination because border patrol and immigrations officers ("la migra") will only be looking for people who can't speak English fluently or look Hispanic. Now, I suppose that means that only a select group will be pulled aside. However, in my opinion, just because someone doesn't have my blond hair and pale complexion does not mean that they should be questioned by the police. This law has the potential to cause significant Hispanic discrimination.
My belief is that the key to deterring illegal immigration is in better enforcing the law that prevents illegal immigrants from being hired. Some people think that making the borders impossible to cross solves the problem, but instead that creates thousands of horrible deaths for people who try to do it anyway. Constantly checking IDs won't help either because not every illegal immigrant will be caught, or plenty of legal immigrants will be unfairly questioned. Not giving jobs to illegal immigrants will hopefully end up shifting those jobs to legal immigrants or other Americans. However, I acknowledge that there is a lot I don't understand about the issue. What would you do?
I actually agree with you, removing jobs from the illegal migrant population would be the best way to keep them from coming to the U.S. However, I wonder if that won't hurt the U.S. too much to be worth it. Many businesses only survive on the market because they can pay their workers less than minimal wage. While I do not think it is fair to these migrants, the U.S. government still needs to think about the U.S. first and foremost.
ReplyDeleteThe change I would suggest is to greatly open up legal channels of immigration.
The whole thing is a very complicated and delicate issue. Personally, I think that even if you didn't hire illegal immigrants, Americans would not do the types of jobs that illegal immigrants are usually hired to do, like seasonal farm work. Those are just the type of jobs that I think many Americans feel are "below" them. I agree with you that making the border mroe difficult will solve no problems, people will still try to cross the border. And I would also have to agree with you that hiring legal immigrants would solve some problems, but definitely not all.
ReplyDeleteThanks to all of you for not oversimplifying this very emotional and complicated issue. Molly, I really like the way you structured this post as well as how you framed it, opinion-wise.
ReplyDeleteThe "choke-point" of business-hiring practices seems like a good place to start.