Arizona governor signs immigration bill

Phoenix, Arizona (CNN) -- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a state bill Friday that requires police to determine whether a person is in the United States legally, which critics say will foster racial profiling and discrimination but supporters say will crack down on illegal immigration.


The Republican governor also issued an executive order that would require additional training for local officers on how to implement the law without engaging in racial profiling.

"This training will include what does and does not constitute reasonable suspicion that a person is not legally present in the United States," Brewer said after signing the bill.

Previously, officers could check someone's immigration status only if that person was suspected in another crime.

What will Arizona's immigration law do?

Brewer's executive order was in response to critics who argue that the new law will lead to racial profiling, saying that most police officers don't have enough training to look past race while investigating a person's legal status.

"Racial profiling is illegal. It is illegal in America, and it's certainly illegal in Arizona," Brewer said.

The bill is considered to be among the toughest immigration measures in the nation. Supporters say the measure is needed to fill a void left by the federal government's failure to enforce its immigration laws.

This week, its leading sponsor, state Sen. Russell Pearce, said, "Illegal is not a race; it's a crime."

"We're going to take the handcuffs off of law enforcement. We're going to put them on the bad guy," said Pearce, a Republican.

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Inaction on immigration reform a travesty

By Julian Zelizer, Special to CNN


April 21, 2010 9:52 a.m. EDT
 
Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security: From World War II to the War on Terrorism," published by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.




(CNN) -- Republicans and Democrats in Congress seem to have found one issue on which they agree. Neither party wants to get near immigration reform, the new "third rail" in American politics -- an issue so politically charged that politicians risk their careers by touching it.

Since Congress failed to reach agreement on legislation in 2006 that would have offered undocumented immigrants amnesty and a path toward naturalization, both parties have kept as far away from this issue as they did from health care after President Clinton's reform went down to defeat in 1994.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, announced that Democrats would tackle immigration reform, although he made some statements a few days later that seemed more hesitant. Despite Reid's promises that Democrats will deal with this issue, the verdict is still out as to how much political capital the party is willing to invest.

Although President Obama has repeatedly stated his support for immigration reform, there is still little evidence that the Democratic Party or the GOP is prepared to join colleagues like Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, to fight for legislation.

If Congress is unable to pass immigration reform, it will create more opportunities for states to move forward with the kind of harsh restrictionist measures passed by the Arizona Senate on Monday.

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Better options needed on immigration reform

When Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced their immigration reform plan, the Obama administration said it will support it. Unfortunately, it recycles the same bad ideas that have led to the defeat of reform efforts over the last five years. In some ways, it is even worse.


Schumer and Graham dramatize the lack of new ideas among Washington power brokers. Real immigration reform requires a real alternative. We need a framework that embodies the goals of immigrants and working people, not the political calculations of a reluctant Congress.

What's wrong with the Schumer-Graham proposal?

-- It ignores trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, which produce profits for U.S. corporations, but increase poverty in Mexico and Central America. Since NAFTA went into effect, income in Mexico dropped, while millions of workers lost jobs and farmers their land. If we do not change U.S. trade policy, millions of displaced people will continue to come, no matter how many walls we build.

-- People working without papers will be fired and even imprisoned under their proposal, and raids will increase. Vulnerability makes it harder for people to defend their rights, organize unions and raise wages. That keeps the price of immigrant labor low. Every worker will have to show a national ID card (an idea too extreme even for the Bush administration). This will not stop people from coming to the United States, but it will produce more immigration raids, firings and a much larger detention system.

-- They treat the flow of people coming north as a labor supply only. They propose new guest-worker programs, where workers would have few rights and no leverage to organize for better conditions.

-- Their legalization scheme imposes barriers for the 12 million people who need legal status. In 1986, even President Ronald Reagan, hardly a liberal, signed a plan in which people gained legal status quickly and easily. Many are now citizens and have made contributions to our country.

Instead, we need reform that unites people and protects everyone's rights and jobs, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike. We need to use our ideals of rights and equality to guide us. It's time to put those ideas into a bill that can bring our country together, not divide it. A human rights immigration bill would:

-- Stop trade agreements that create poverty and forced migration.

-- Give people a quick and easy path to legal status and citizenship.

-- End the visa backlogs.

-- Protect the rights of all workers - against discrimination, or getting fired for demanding rights or for not having papers.

-- Bring civil rights and peace to border communities.

-- Dismantle the immigration prisons, end detention and stop the raids.

-- Allow people to come to the United States with green cards that are not tied to employment. -- Use reasonable legalization fees to finance job programs in communities with high unemployment.

-- End guest-worker programs.

Those who say no alternative is possible might remember the "go slow" advice given to young students going to jail in the South in the early '60s. If they'd heeded it, we'd still be waiting for a Voting Rights Act. Do we believe in equality or not?

That's the choice.



David Bacon is the author of "Illegal People - How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants."