New Prove-You're-A-Citizen law

[JimmyLyding]

When Governor Brewer signs this into law, can anyone see some unintended consequences? For those who don't know, this law will allow law enforcement officials to require anyone they come into contact with to prove that they are legally allowed to be in this country whether as a citizen or guest. For the record a valid driver's license is NOT considered proof-of-citizenship. Does this mean that those of us who appear as if we might be foreign have to carry around our birth certificates?
I'm not that worried about myself because I'm a 6'4" white dude, but then I remember reading about 80-year-old nuns being strip-searched by airport security.
As for hiking, I always carry my wallet with me because I'd rather risk losing it on the trail than having it stolen out of my car. But I'm not about to carry my birth certificate around. Anyhoo, this law will probably be struck down by the courts.

[Tough_Boots]

yawn...

[sidhayes]

Apparantly you don't care about crime. Is is all right with you if I drive off with your car or take your lawnmower? Would things become more relevant with you? I need new shoes. I like yours. " Give" them to me.

[Tough_Boots]

snore...

[Jeffshadows]

You cannot be middle of the line is this issue. You are either on the side, make excuses, for the multitudes of criminal alien squatters or you realize that every single one of them is a lawbreaker and needs to be dealt with.

I wish it was that simple, I really do. It truly is not.

[sidhayes]

No explanation why it is not?

[te_wa]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02527.html

hypocrites

The truth behind Arizona's immigration law
By Kirk Adams
Friday, May 28, 2010
PHOENIX

Lately it seems as though each day brings a new group or city council announcing that it will boycott Arizona in response to our state's recently enacted immigration law, S.B. 1070. Many organizations and individuals are jumping on the media-hype bandwagon rather than taking the time to read the bill and research the facts.

It is not just incredibly unfortunate that cities such as Boston, San Francisco and Seattle, which are far removed from the problems that we face here on the southern border, have announced boycotts against Arizona. Frankly, it's offensive. If such drug- and gang-related crimes were affecting public safety in Manhattan or Boston, East Coast elites would be declaring a national emergency.

But instead we have Attorney General Eric Holder, who, after criticizing S.B. 1070 and suggesting that the federal government may sue Arizona over the legislation, admitted while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee that he hadn't actually read the bill.

And then there is President Obama, who called S.B. 1070 "misguided" despite the fact that it mirrors federal law. After significant pressure to do something about illegal immigration, Obama pledged this week to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the southern border. But this plan falls far short of real border security, and the people of Arizona will no longer be assuaged by such symbolic actions.

Americans overwhelmingly support this law, according to polls, and at least 18 other states are considering adopting similar immigration laws. In fact, Arizona's state government has received hundreds of unsolicited donations in the mail from citizens across the nation asking us to use the money to fight illegal immigration. This sends an incredible message to our federal government that, until it steps up to protect citizens, states will have no choice but to act, as Arizona did, for our citizens' safety.

I hope the president, the attorney general and other concerned Americans read Arizona's legislation. If they did, they would learn that as signed, S.B. 1070 mirrors federal law by making it a state crime to be in this country illegally, as has been the case in federal statute for decades. The trailer bill makes it crystal-clear that racial profiling is not and will not be tolerated. It also recognizes an established standard, "reasonable suspicion," for Arizona law enforcement officials to use when determining whether a person's presence is legal. This measure protects both the officer and the individual in question.



Furthermore, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order requiring the state to use representatives from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to train our law enforcement officials, ensuring they receive appropriate training to apply federal standards. In any event, the legislation clearly states that law enforcement officials "may not consider race, color or national origin" while enforcing immigration law.

Under the law, officers can only attempt to determine a person's immigration status during "lawful contact," which is defined as a lawful stop, detention or arrest. Any "reasonable suspicion" can be derived only through the investigation of another violation or crime. Those who are concerned that law enforcement can simply walk up to a person and say, "Can I see your papers?" should keep this in mind.

Even California, a state home to vocal detractors of S.B. 1070 and Arizona boycotters, has a similar law on its books. I suggest critics research California Penal Code Section 834b which states, in part, that: "With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following:

"Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status."

Sound familiar?

Arizona has plenty to do fighting the effects of illegal immigration. It's a shame that because of our efforts to protect our citizens and uphold federal law, we now have to fight ignorance, too.

The writer, a Republican from Mesa, is speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives.

[PLC92084]

Reading the article you referenced, Te-wa, I'm not sure who you're referring to as "hypocrites"... At first I thought you meant the Washington Compost but the article seemed well written and cogent.

If you mean Eric Holder, etal, then I have to agree! Or... my own State that refuses to enforce the law? Again, I'd agree.

I don't really want to get into the fray but I'm curious who you mean...

[Tough_Boots]

Kirk Adams? really? really? We might as well be taking Sheriff Joe for gospel at this point.

He seems to ignore the fact that Maricopa has proven time and time again that they can find a pretty easy excuse for "lawful contact" when it involves someone of darker skin. You can't pass wording like this in a state with Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce.

[te_wa]

i was neither for or against kirk adams' writing, although the term hypocrites was to be aimed at California and their attempt to overlook their own law(s) while pointing a blaming, boycotting finger at you and me. But then, making fun of California is not difficult, they've got more fruits and nuts than trail mix..

[big_load]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02527.html

Speaker Adams is apparently unfamiliar with the size of the illegal population in NYC and the urban northeast in general, or the relative prevalence of gang- and drug-related crime, but I don't think the truth satisfies his political purposes. Phoenix murder rate: 6.83/100,000 (2009). Newark, NJ murder rate: 37.4/100,000 (2006). The first of four would-be MS-13 initiates was just convicted in the killings of four Newark students last year. While MS-13 seem strictly urban for now, the Latin Kings are well established in even small suburban and semi-rural towns. Of course Newark also has plenty of Bloods and Crips, too, but they don't seem as well organized.

[BobP]

I propose to end this debate we have a hike off. I nominate sidhayes to hike for those who support sb1070.

[Al_HikesAZ]

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win. Thomas Sowell

[chumley]

Can somebody please name "a job that Americans won't do"? I've always thought that was a bunch of crap. (I believe it is a term coined first by Dubya).

[azbackpackr]

You have to be kidding. There are a lot of Americans who don't want to work at all! And they are definitely not going to go down to Yuma and pick lettuce, even though it pays fairly well and it is not that hard to get hired.

[DarthStiller]

I think there's a George Carlin quote that goes something like "If all this globalization really starts working, who's gonna clean the toilets in this country?" RIP GC.

[BobP]

Can somebody please name "a job that Americans won't do"?

I've never seen the show...Dirtiest Jobs...but I've seen the commercials and picking lettuce would be a walk in the park compared to some of those jobs.

[Jeffshadows]

I'm not so sure the issue is the work as much as it is the pay. I know a guy who does work for the DOE on reactors that he would never do if the local power company was paying him $9.50/hr to do it. If we suddenly start seeing lettuce pickers paid $20/hr, none of us would be able to afford lettuce...

[Tough_Boots]

Can somebody please name "a job that Americans won't do"? I've always thought that was a bunch of crap.

Factory chicken farms have a 150% yearly employee turnover rate.

[chumley]

I agree that there are plenty of lazy people who don't want to do hard labor. But I think there are still plenty of Americans who don't mind it. But only if it pays a competitive wage.

Hypothetically, if I can get $20/hr sitting on my fat butt in front of a computer in a climate controlled office, why would I shovel dirt in the hot sun for the same $20/hr? I wouldn't. But I would do it for $30/hr. The problem is that shoveling dirt for $30/hr doesn't exist, because there's a labor force willing to do the work for $10/hr. Why would a business owner pay 3x as much for labor if he doesn't have to?

If there were no illegal immigrants in Yuma, do you really think there would be nobody to pick the lettuce? If the farmer couldn't hire enough people to pick the lettuce, he'd offer more money until he did have the people. And yes, lettuce would cost more at the store.

[chumley]

So I just did a little research on this. Here's a fascinating column from Slate. The last paragraph sums it up quite nicely.

Dirty Work
What are the jobs Americans won't do?
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Jan. 12, 2007, at 6:36 AM ET

The United States is a nation of hard workers. Compared with many other developed countries, the U.S. boasts high rates of labor-force participation and productivity and has a very low unemployment rate. Americans work longer hours than Europeans—1,804 hours per worker for the United States in 2005, compared to 1,434 in Germany and 1,535 in France, according to the OECD.

Yet it's increasingly common to hear politicians, CEOs, and immigration activists impugn American workers as a bunch of shiftless layabouts who regard many good jobs as beneath their dignity. That, they say, is why employers have to turn to immigrants—some of them legal, many of them illegal. To hear CEOs tell it, they'd much rather hire English-speaking, tax-paying U.S. citizens, people who won't disrupt operations by getting rounded up in Homeland Security sweeps. But they just can't find any Americans willing to do their jobs. As President Bush himself said last March, the United States needs a temporary guest-worker program that would "match willing foreign workers with willing American employers to fill jobs that Americans will not do."

What are these jobs that Americans will not do? Do they exist? Or are they a figment of the business community's imagination? It turns out that their claims are largely true—there are plenty of jobs Americans avoid. Let's take a tour of them. Americans shun pretty much any unskilled labor that requires them to get their hands dirty: landscaping, entry-level construction, picking fruits and vegetables (Reuters reports that "up to 70 percent of U.S. farm workers are estimated to be undocumented, totaling about 500,000 people"), cleaning hotel rooms, busing tables, and prep cooking in urban restaurants.

But the refusal to do jobs is moving up the value chain. American workers appear to be less interested in some kinds of factory jobs. The Washington Post, for example, recently reported that Georgia's carpet factories are increasingly dominated by Mexican immigrant workers.

Americans, it seems, are also less willing to take stressful jobs that require lots of training and long hours, and that require them to work in unpleasant environments. For example, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing is warning of a nursing shortage. This survey from the American Hospital Association says there are 118,000 nursing vacancies in the United States. Meanwhile, a 2003 report by the Council on Graduate Medical Education suggested there could be a shortage of anywhere from 65,000 to 150,000 doctors in 2020. (Given the time it takes to educate and train a physician, it's not too soon to worry.)

Spending your days tethered to a computer is also work that many Americans avoid. The Information Technology Association of America notes that 77 percent of companies it polled said there was a shortage of qualified IT talent in the United States. The solution: Import more geeks. The ITAA (and pretty much every technology company) supports boosting the number of H-1B visas above the current limit of 65,000 per fiscal year.

The more one looks, the more shortages of willing workers appear. Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe last month reported that the Pentagon is "considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks—including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to U.S. citizenship if they volunteer." Today, about 2 percent of the soldiers protecting America—about 30,000—aren't technically Americans. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on a dire shortage of professors of accounting, finance, and management that may cause some schools to curtail course offerings. "AACSB International, the accrediting organization for business schools, estimates a shortage of 1,000 Ph.D.s in the U.S. this year that will grow to 2,400 by 2012." (Apparently, American citizens with Ph.D.s in accounting, finance, and management can get high-paying, satisfying jobs in the private sector. Who knew?)

For the industries involved, and for their customers—everyone from meat-eaters to hospital patients—these shortages are a real challenge. But when employers have difficulty filling jobs at the wages they wish to pay, and as a result seek foreign-born workers, they shouldn't blame it on a fundamental unwillingness of Americans to work in those industries or professions. After all, in many of these fields—construction, nursing, the military, teaching, accounting—Americans still fill most positions. Immigrants tend to predominate only in the least attractive work imaginable—manual, back-breaking, seasonal, benefitless, farm labor.

Americans haven't grown too wealthy and snooty for the kind of work that gets your hands dirty, or for nursing, or for computer programming. Rather, the people who have the skills to enter those fields also have opportunities and skills to enter other fields. And so they have to decide whether the rewards—monetary and psychological—of the opportunity before them are worth it. It's not so much that Americans aren't willing to pick fruit and become computer programmers. Rather, they aren't willing to do those jobs for the prevailing wages and benefits. The Army may need foreign nationals to help fill its ranks, but the private security firms that pay six-figure salaries to ex-military types for security work don't. People without much in the way of skills or education probably prefer to take entry-level jobs at Wal-Mart rather than work at a meat-packing plant, even though it might pay a little less—it's less dangerous and disgusting.

The failure here isn't in the work ethic of Americans. Rather, it lies with the CEOs, business owners, university and hospital administrators, and government officials—and ultimately, with all of us who benefit from cheap labor—to offer the wages and benefits necessary to attract sufficient numbers of legal workers. There's a reason they call the labor market a market.

Run across an example of a job Americans aren't willing to do? Send it to moneybox@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2157483/