Baker Institute Student Forum debate: Arizona immigration laws (1)

By Gabe Cuadra     9/23/10 7:00pm

ARIZONA SPARKED THE current national illegal immigration debate, passing a law that has drawn criticism across the country. President Barack Obama quickly spoke out against it, saying it could "undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles was quoted by The New York Times comparing the measure to Nazism. What critics fail to realize is that this law is the result of a failure by the federal government, not the state of Arizona. Faced with few other options other than accepting the status quo, the Arizona legislature gave state authorities the right to enforce federal law by checking the immigration status of individuals who are in contact with police for other violations. It doesn't go above or beyond federal law, as has at times been painted, to discourage illegal immigration.

For too long, the federal government and the American consumer have implicitly accepted illegal immigration without making a sustained effort to change the federal law. This acceptance, not the Arizona law, has obstructed the "fairness" that the president spoke about.

The group that suffers most from the inconsistencies of written law, attitudes and enforcement is the illegal immigrants themselves. These inconsistencies have cost illegal immigrants their lives, left them vulnerable to employer abuse and left some deported after years or decades here.

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The current situation also handicaps border patrol and local law enforcement. Those who come into the country illegally for narcotic or criminal purposes are less likely to be detained or deported because of the presence of millions of others working to improve their lives and those of their families. In the worst cases, this puts American lives at risk, as with the rancher killed by a cartel lookout on the Arizona border last spring.

So instead of berating the Arizona law and those border states who must daily confront the costs of a failing immigration policy, those in our nation's capital must form the solution.

This solution should include a path to residency for the millions already here. Not doing so makes any provision inherently impractical. It must also include a system to document and keep track of workers entering the country. It must be rapid, suficiently large and suficiently dificult to sidestep. Finally, it must provide real consequences to those who hire illegal immigrants. Jobs are the number one draw for the majority of those moving illegally across the border.

The Arizona solution doesn't solve the immigration problem, but the state has few other courses of action.

The real legal problem with immigration lies not in Phoenix, but in Washington, D.C.

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