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Don't Support Arizona Law
July 23, 2010
CONTACT: Victoria Middleton, (843)720-1424
Greenville News
Greenville, South Carolina
By Victoria Middleton
It is a low point in modern American history when a state law — Arizona SB1070 — gives police the unprecedented authority to demand “your papers please.” This is the kind of practice we abhor and justly criticize in nondemocratic countries.
This is why we — the ACLU, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), along with other civil rights groups — have filed a legal challenge in federal court to stop the law from taking effect. And why we regret that our state’s Attorney General has submitted a brief in favor of Arizona’s racial profiling law.
The law threatens America’s fundamental values of equality and fairness. It violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law because it unlawfully invites the racial profiling of people who look or sound foreign-born. It makes all of Arizona’s Latino residents and other foreigners potential criminal suspects. Empty language inserted into SB1070 supposedly to prevent profiling is meaningless and won’t prevent police from basing their suspicions on race and on the way people look.
The Arizona law does nothing to counter violence along the border. It goes after people who fail to carry their “papers” rather than drug kingpins, smugglers and kidnappers who threaten border communities. Law enforcement officials (including Arizona’s state police association) oppose the law because it diverts scant resources from real threats to public safety. Another minus: it makes witnesses and victims less likely to come forward to help the police.
There are a number of ways in which the Arizona law directly conflicts with federal law regarding the regulation and enforcement of immigration. Not only is this unconstitutional under the supremacy cause, but it is also bad policy. The United States cannot have a patchwork of conflicting immigration laws depending on what state you happen to find yourself in. No wonder the business community is concerned.
Federal immigration policy is very complicated, carrying both civil and criminal penalties. Congress has chosen not to make it a crime simply to be in the United States without authorization. Nothing prevents police from investigating real criminal conduct and activity within the limits of our Constitution. This Arizona law is un-American because it goes beyond that and undermines our values of fairness and equality for all people.
What happens in Arizona should stay in Arizona, and we hope it will. We don’t want our state to become a police state, where bad practices like racial profiling are tolerated and certain people are considered guilty until proven innocent.
Additional information about the ACLU can be found online at: www.aclu.org.
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