Arizona gets tough on immigration

Arizona has a tough new immigration law, and the United States doesn't. There's the rub.

Opponents are threatening to lead protests and boycotts aimed at forcing Arizona legislators to rescind the law, which charges local law enforcement officials with questioning people about their immigration status whenever officials have "reasonable suspicion" that a person is in the country illegally. Opponents say the law will lead to racial profiling, although the law specifically prohibits basing suspicion on federally protected factors such as race, color or ethnicity. President Obama has called the law "misguided," and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says he is considering a federal challenge to the law.

The controversial Arizona law exists for two simple reasons: The federal government has failed to secure America's borders, and politicians have lacked the courage to stanch the flood of illegal immigrants coming into this country. Estimates are that about 11 million people are in this country illegally, but, with the exception of a few well-publicized workplace raids, the federal government has not tried very hard to do much about it. In arid, lightly populated Arizona, the long border with Mexico is a favorite of smugglers. State officials have grown tired of trying to house, educate and care for people who, legally, should not be here. Their new law is an attempt to do what the federal government has failed to do — identify and deport or prosecute those people who have broken the nation's laws by crossing an international border without consent or notice.

Arizona's new law is only slightly tougher than a federal program begun under the Bush administration to train local law enforcement agents to identify arrested persons who might be illegal aliens. That federal program has also been hotly criticized and is being used by local deputies in only a few counties in North Carolina. More vigorous use of this program and prosecution of businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens or fail to require proof of legal residency would have made the Arizona law unnecessary.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, worried about his re-election chances and eager to appeal to Hispanic constituents, has made immigration law a priority this year. But if the new legislation is merely a redemption program for the 11 million illegals already here and a welcome mat for millions more to follow, Arizona's problem will not be solved.

Unconstitutional? I don't know. Article I of the Constitution makes immigration and foreign commerce a matter for Congress, but proponents of Arizona's law say it would not change federal immigration law; it would merely assist in the enforcement of the law. Challenges on a racial or civil-rights basis seem doomed. The question here appears to be state-federal jurisdiction, not civil rights, if the law is enforced as its supporters say it will be.

The biggest concern I have about the law concerns appearances. The requirement that everyone who might, on the basis of "reasonable suspicion," be asked to prove his legal immigrant status smacks of totalitarianism. Being asked for one's "papers" by uniformed officers is something that happens in bad movies set in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, not in Arizona.