04-30-2010, 10:56 PM
Heather Mac Donald
Praising Arizona
The stateâs new immigration law is perfectly reasonable, but you wouldnât know it from the New York Times.
30 April 2010
Supporters of Arizonaâs new law strengthening immigration enforcement in the state should take heart from todayâs New York Times editorial blasting it. âStopping Arizonaâ contains so many blatant falsehoods that a reader can be fully confident that the law as actually written is a reasonable, lawful response to a pressing problem. Only by distorting the lawâs provisions can the Times and the lawâs many other critics make it out to be a racist assault on fundamental American rights.
The law, SB 1070, empowers local police officers to check the immigration status of individuals whom they have encountered during a âlawful contact,â if an officer reasonably suspects the person stopped of being in the country illegally, and if an inquiry into the personâs status is âpracticable.â The officer may not base his suspicion of illegality âsolely [on] race, color or national origin.â (Arizona lawmakers recently amended the law to change the term âlawful contactâ to âlawful stop, detention or arrestâ and deleted the word âsolelyâ from the phrase regarding race, color, and national origin. The governor is expected to sign the amendments.) The law also requires aliens to carry their immigration documents, mirroring an identical federal requirement. Failure to comply with the federal law on carrying immigration papers becomes a state misdemeanor under the Arizona law.
Good luck finding any of these provisions in the Timesâs editorial. Leave aside for the moment the sweeping conclusions with which the Times begins its screedâsuch gems as the charge that the law âturns all of the stateâs Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspectsâ and is an act of âracial separation.â Instead, letâs see how the Times characterizes the specific legislative language, which is presumably the basis for its indictment.
The paper alleges that the âstatute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.â False. The law gives an officer the discretion, when practicable, to determine someoneâs immigration status only after the officer has otherwise made a lawful stop, detention, or arrest. It does not allow, much less require, fishing expeditions for illegal aliens. But if, say, after having stopped someone for running a red light, an officer discovers that the driver does not have a driverâs license, does not speak English, and has no other government identification on him, the officer may, if practicable, send an inquiry to his dispatcher to check the driverâs status with a federal immigration clearinghouse.
The Times then alleges that the law âempower[s] police officers to stop anyone they choose and demand to see papers.â False again, for the reasons stated above. An officer must have a lawful, independent basis for a stop; he can only ask to see papers if he has âreasonable suspicionâ to believe that the person is in the country illegally. âReasonable suspicionâ is a legal concept of long-standing validity, rooted in the Constitutionâs prohibition of âunreasonable searches and seizures.â It meaningfully constrains police activity; officers are trained in its contours, which have evolved through common-law precedents, as a matter of course. If the New York Times now thinks that the concept is insufficient as a check on police power, it will have to persuade every court and every law enforcement agency in the country to throw out the phraseâand the Constitution with itâand come up with something that suits the Timesâs contempt for police power.
On broader legal issues, the Times is just as misleading. The paper alleges that the âSupreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot make their own immigration laws.â Actually, the law on preemption is almost impossibly murky. As the Times later notes in its editorial, the Justice Department ruled in 2002, after surveying the relevant Supreme Court and appellate precedents, that âstate and local police had âinherent authorityâ to make immigration arrests.â The paper does not like that conclusion, but it has not been revoked as official legal advice. If states have inherent authority to make immigration arrests, they can certainly do so under a state law that merely tracks the federal law requiring that immigrants carry documentation.
The Times tips its hand at the end of the editorial. It calls for the Obama administration to end a program that trains local law enforcement officials in relevant aspects of immigration law and that deputizes them to act as full-fledged immigration agents. The so-called 287(g) program acts as a âforce multiplier,â as the Times points out, adding local resources to immigration law enforcementâjust as Arizonaâs SB 1070 does. At heart, this force-multiplier effect is what the hysteria over Arizonaâs law is all about: SB 1070 ups the chances that an illegal alien will actually be detected andâhorror of horrorsâdeported. The illegal-alien lobby, of which the New York Times is a charter member, does not believe that U.S. immigration laws should be enforced. (The Timesâs other contribution today to the prevailing de facto amnesty for illegal aliens was to fail to disclose, in an article about a brutal 2007 schoolyard execution in Newark, that the suspected leader was an illegal alien and member of the predominantly illegal-alien gang Mara Salvatrucha.) Usually unwilling for political reasons to say so explicitly, the lobby comes up with smoke screensâsuch as the Timesâs demagogic charges about SB 1070 as an act of âracial separationââto divert attention from the underlying issue. Playing the race card is the tactic of those unwilling to make arguments on the merits.
The Arizona law is not about race; itâs not an attack on Latinos or legal immigrants. Itâs about one thing and one thing only: making immigration enforcement a reality. It is time for a national debate: Do we or donât we want to enforce the countryâs immigration laws? If the answer is yes, the Arizona law is a necessary and lawful tool for doing so. If the answer is no, we should end the charade of inadequate, half-hearted enforcement, enact an amnesty now, and remove future penalties for immigration violations.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the coauthor of The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Todayâs.
Praising Arizona
The stateâs new immigration law is perfectly reasonable, but you wouldnât know it from the New York Times.
30 April 2010
Supporters of Arizonaâs new law strengthening immigration enforcement in the state should take heart from todayâs New York Times editorial blasting it. âStopping Arizonaâ contains so many blatant falsehoods that a reader can be fully confident that the law as actually written is a reasonable, lawful response to a pressing problem. Only by distorting the lawâs provisions can the Times and the lawâs many other critics make it out to be a racist assault on fundamental American rights.
The law, SB 1070, empowers local police officers to check the immigration status of individuals whom they have encountered during a âlawful contact,â if an officer reasonably suspects the person stopped of being in the country illegally, and if an inquiry into the personâs status is âpracticable.â The officer may not base his suspicion of illegality âsolely [on] race, color or national origin.â (Arizona lawmakers recently amended the law to change the term âlawful contactâ to âlawful stop, detention or arrestâ and deleted the word âsolelyâ from the phrase regarding race, color, and national origin. The governor is expected to sign the amendments.) The law also requires aliens to carry their immigration documents, mirroring an identical federal requirement. Failure to comply with the federal law on carrying immigration papers becomes a state misdemeanor under the Arizona law.
Good luck finding any of these provisions in the Timesâs editorial. Leave aside for the moment the sweeping conclusions with which the Times begins its screedâsuch gems as the charge that the law âturns all of the stateâs Latinos, even legal immigrants and citizens, into criminal suspectsâ and is an act of âracial separation.â Instead, letâs see how the Times characterizes the specific legislative language, which is presumably the basis for its indictment.
The paper alleges that the âstatute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.â False. The law gives an officer the discretion, when practicable, to determine someoneâs immigration status only after the officer has otherwise made a lawful stop, detention, or arrest. It does not allow, much less require, fishing expeditions for illegal aliens. But if, say, after having stopped someone for running a red light, an officer discovers that the driver does not have a driverâs license, does not speak English, and has no other government identification on him, the officer may, if practicable, send an inquiry to his dispatcher to check the driverâs status with a federal immigration clearinghouse.
The Times then alleges that the law âempower[s] police officers to stop anyone they choose and demand to see papers.â False again, for the reasons stated above. An officer must have a lawful, independent basis for a stop; he can only ask to see papers if he has âreasonable suspicionâ to believe that the person is in the country illegally. âReasonable suspicionâ is a legal concept of long-standing validity, rooted in the Constitutionâs prohibition of âunreasonable searches and seizures.â It meaningfully constrains police activity; officers are trained in its contours, which have evolved through common-law precedents, as a matter of course. If the New York Times now thinks that the concept is insufficient as a check on police power, it will have to persuade every court and every law enforcement agency in the country to throw out the phraseâand the Constitution with itâand come up with something that suits the Timesâs contempt for police power.
On broader legal issues, the Times is just as misleading. The paper alleges that the âSupreme Court has consistently ruled that states cannot make their own immigration laws.â Actually, the law on preemption is almost impossibly murky. As the Times later notes in its editorial, the Justice Department ruled in 2002, after surveying the relevant Supreme Court and appellate precedents, that âstate and local police had âinherent authorityâ to make immigration arrests.â The paper does not like that conclusion, but it has not been revoked as official legal advice. If states have inherent authority to make immigration arrests, they can certainly do so under a state law that merely tracks the federal law requiring that immigrants carry documentation.
The Times tips its hand at the end of the editorial. It calls for the Obama administration to end a program that trains local law enforcement officials in relevant aspects of immigration law and that deputizes them to act as full-fledged immigration agents. The so-called 287(g) program acts as a âforce multiplier,â as the Times points out, adding local resources to immigration law enforcementâjust as Arizonaâs SB 1070 does. At heart, this force-multiplier effect is what the hysteria over Arizonaâs law is all about: SB 1070 ups the chances that an illegal alien will actually be detected andâhorror of horrorsâdeported. The illegal-alien lobby, of which the New York Times is a charter member, does not believe that U.S. immigration laws should be enforced. (The Timesâs other contribution today to the prevailing de facto amnesty for illegal aliens was to fail to disclose, in an article about a brutal 2007 schoolyard execution in Newark, that the suspected leader was an illegal alien and member of the predominantly illegal-alien gang Mara Salvatrucha.) Usually unwilling for political reasons to say so explicitly, the lobby comes up with smoke screensâsuch as the Timesâs demagogic charges about SB 1070 as an act of âracial separationââto divert attention from the underlying issue. Playing the race card is the tactic of those unwilling to make arguments on the merits.
The Arizona law is not about race; itâs not an attack on Latinos or legal immigrants. Itâs about one thing and one thing only: making immigration enforcement a reality. It is time for a national debate: Do we or donât we want to enforce the countryâs immigration laws? If the answer is yes, the Arizona law is a necessary and lawful tool for doing so. If the answer is no, we should end the charade of inadequate, half-hearted enforcement, enact an amnesty now, and remove future penalties for immigration violations.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal, the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the coauthor of The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Todayâs.