AZ, ur doing it rong

[cellio]

On the heels of passing legislation to place local police officers between a rock and a hard place, Arizona is now proposing (state) legislation to deny citizenship to people born of illegals. I say this from the bottom of my law-respecting soul: Arizona, WTF?

Now I am clearly in a minority among my friends; I don't believe that we should just turn a blind eye to law-breaking. Illegals shouldn't get "amnesty" just because they're already here; even if we are going to set aside their past crimes, at the very least the ones who came here of their own free will should go to the back of the line, behind everyone who's following the process, and it's not wrong to make them wait at home. Impractical, maybe, but not wrong. (Also impractical is any large-scale hunt for them; catch them where you find them and by all means look at large, suspect employers, but leave it at that.) I have sympathy for people who came here illegally in their parents' arms, and I don't know what to do about that.

And I believe that if a police officer who stops you for a traffic violation can give you a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, a local misdemeanor, then how much the moreso should it be perfectly legal to check for felony-level violations of federal law. And I also believe that "anchor babies" born to illegals should not confer citizenship, though they are unambiguously citizens themselves per the Constitution.

But. Arizona, you're gone off the deep end and you're making it harder for your law-respecting allies to hold any traction in this debate. Stop it. You're giving ammo to the other side.

Certain things are the domain of federal law, and you should butt out. Don't make your local police officers, who often have to rely on the good will of communities they work in, into the enemy. And for heaven's sake, what on earth possessed you to go up against the US Constitution? That can only end badly. (You should maybe try reading it sometime.) If Congress passes legislation granting automatic citizenship to illegals who come here to have their kids, those us us who have a problem with that will hold you directly responsible.

The immigration reform I want to see goes something like this:

• Eliminate quotas. Anyone who wants to come here legally is welcome and a path to citizenship should exist as it does now. Entry should be expedited for anyone with a credible need for asylum.
• (Edit based on comments:) Streamline and simplify the application process.
• Government-funded support is only for citizens. We can't afford, nor should we be on the hook, to support all the world's needy.
• Punish those who employ illegals along with the illegals. If this means that consumer prices go up because the people "who will do the dirty jobs Americans won't do" are replaced by others at a higher price, I really don't have a problem with that. I'd rather not be part of a system of exploitation and I realize that's not free.
• Citizen children should be treated the same way they would be if, instead of being deported, mom and dad were doing jail time for a different crime. We don't forgive armed robbery or murder just because there are kids; why should we do something different in this case? (The children can always leave with the parents, of course. Many things in life are not fair; parents' bad decisions, and just plain dumb luck, can have effects on kids. And these wouldn't be the first kids who are uprooted from their friends and community because the parents have to move.)

Arizona, I think we agree on most of this (maybe not the first point). How about channeling some of your furor toward Congress to work on this constructively? Please stop making things worse.

Comments

[cellio]

I was focusing on federal services since it's federal law. I should have been more clear about that. Since schools are funded by local taxpayers I think local jurisdictions are free to make their own decisions, and they won't all decide the same way.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

California tried some years back. It is effectively impossible to stop the intermingling of federal and state money for the delivery of most services.

I confess, this is where my utilitarian streak kicks in and gives up. There are many evils and injustices in the world. At some point, I decide I prefer things to function than for justice to be done. Amnesty is just plain easier, cheaper, and resolves certain economic problems associated with the creation of a large, captive work force.

[cellio]

We were having this conversation at a beit midrash on Shabbat, where I cast the problem as partly a matter of din versus rachamim. AZ is all din; many of the reformers (including some at the table) are all rachamim. Just as we do not want God to be either all just or all merciful, we can't be so ourselves. I'm looking for an answer in the middle, where we don't simply ignore laws we don't like but we also recognize that this deeply affects human beings and we need to care about that.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

How much am I required to tork myself and society out of shape on the basis of this principle?

Allow me to give an example from my work. Use of wireless microphones in the broadcast bands has always required a license from the Federal Communications Commission. These licenses are limited to those involved in the production of broadcast programming, cable programming, or movie production. Because the FCC turned a blind eye to enforcement over the last 20 years, these wireless microphones became widely available. They are sold in commercial outlets, and marketed by the manufacturers who are well aware that they are marketing and selling the equipment in violation of FCC rules. When we tried to estimate the number of illegal wireless microphones out there, we gave up. But our conservative estimate topped one million.

These microphones are sources of interference with the new licensed services that spent $19 billion for former TV channels 52-61, as well as public safety services on those frequencies. On channels 2-51, they are impeding the development of unlicensed use in the broadcast white spaces -- a lawful FCC proceeding that has taken 8 years and in which companies have invested many millions of dollars to satisfy FCC standards testing.

Do you tell all the purchasers of illegal wireless microphones "sorry, your equipment is illegal. Stop using it." Or do you try to figure out how to deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of churches, theaters, universities, conference centers, karoke bars, entertainers and others bought these things and are using them?

[cellio]

We have a related case from your field. We told people "we're sorry that the televisions and video recorders you bought in good faith will break because of our policy change; you'll have to do something about that -- here's a coupon for part but not all of your costs". (I'm not complaining, just observing.) Does a technical mitigation exist for the microphones like it did for the TVs?

Granted the cases are different; you could argue that the purchasers should have known that the equipment was illegal at purchase time. Presumably that was hard to know, rather than that hundreds of thousands of institutions all decided to defy the law. This is not my field and I've never been part of such a purchase, so I really have no idea what was likely to have happened on the way to deploying these mics in churches etc.

(Nothing in this comment should be taken as an argument for any particular course of action; I don't know enough yet. I'm trying to understand the problem better.)