arizona immigration law essay

arizona immigration law essay

The Impact of the Arizona Immigration Law

1. Introduction

Approximately 460,000 unauthorized immigrants resided in Arizona in 2010. These unauthorized residents represented roughly seven percent of the state’s population, the highest percentage of any state in the nation. A monthly average of 10,500 unauthorized workers from Mexico also resided in Arizona in 2010, and many remained only a short time in the U.S. before returning to Mexico. Unauthorized immigrants from Mexico accounted for 4.4 percent of Arizona’s population, with the highest concentration in the state’s metropolitan areas. Almost half of these unauthorized residents had U.S.-born children under the age of 18. This article provides a demographic and socioeconomic snapshot of Arizona’s immigrant population. There are approximately 1.6 million foreign-born residents in Arizona, according to the 2010 American Community Survey, making up 22.9 percent of the state’s population. They are an extremely diverse group. 54.1 percent are from Latin America, 27.1 percent from Asia, 11.1 percent from Europe, 5.7 percent from Africa, and 2.0 percent from other regions. The foreign born in Arizona are also an extremely settled population, with approximately 50 percent having arrived in 2000 or earlier. Only 10 percent arrived since 2007. These wide-ranging immigrant groups come for different reasons, and they range from unauthorized immigrants to naturalized American citizens. This article focuses on the portion of this population that is unauthorized or has family members who are unauthorized.

2. Overview of the Arizona Immigration Law

This is a hotly contested topic and is surrounded by many myths. Some facts on the law: Immigration is a federal issue; however, the bill states that it will simply be enforcing existing federal law. The law also mirrors federal law in many provisions, which is likely why it has withstood legal challenges thus far. Finally, public opinion is split almost exactly down the middle. Whether you agree with the law or not, racial profiling is an unethical police measure and it is undoubtedly going to happen. We must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in and what we are willing to sacrifice out of fear and intolerance.

The Arizona immigration law requires immigrants to carry their registration documents on them at all times. This is a direct affront to the 4th amendment, which prevents law enforcement from stopping individuals without probable cause. This law will make it so that the mere act of being Latino is probable cause, resulting in racial profiling on a massive scale. The law also stops day laborers from working on the street, which is, in my opinion, an attack on personal freedoms.

3. Controversies Surrounding the Law

The “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” has been very controversial since its passing. Critics of the new law have suggested that it may lead to racial profiling, a possibility that they claim is already hitting the state. Various law enforcement groups, including the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, have come out in opposition to the new law. Their stance is centered on the burdens that the new law will place on police officers. Under SB 1070, police would be required to determine the immigration status of a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they are an illegal alien. In response to this, police have said that they will have to divert resources away from fighting crime and these decisions will be at the discretion of individual officers. The AZ Chief’s of Police letter argues that the new law will “distract us from our primary mission of keeping our communities safe”. Costs surrounding the bill have been a major point of contention. Arizona has had to face numerous protests and calls for boycotts, a clear sign of the divisions that have emerged from the passing of this law. While some have shown support for the new law, others have claimed that it will only hurt the state’s economy as it continues to recover from the recent economic recession. At a time when the state is already facing budget cuts, the possibility of lawsuits surrounding SB 1070 can only be seen as another burden on the state’s residents in tough economic times. Ballot boxing has occurred over the passing of the immigration law. As it is explained in an article, the Arizona law mirrors federal standards making it difficult to contest in federal court. Attorney General Eric Holder has recently announced a federal counter-lawsuit against the controversial bill.

4. Effects on Immigration Enforcement

With the capability now to enforce immigration law within their borders, Arizona has pursued cooperative agreements which allow the state government increased involvement in immigration enforcement without implementing their own separate immigration legislation. In July 2010, the Arizona Department of Corrections signed an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that will train 100 state corrections officers to enforce federal immigration law at a cost of $1.5 million dollars in federal funding. This is a result of a four-year ICE ACCESS agreement, the first of its kind with a state corrections department, and is a likely indicator that Arizona’s SB 1070 law will indirectly lead to an increase in immigration detention and removal of noncitizens from the state. This is the expressed goal of SB 1070’s architects, who felt the legislation was necessary due to the federal government’s inability to enforce immigration law effectively. This will face fierce opposition from critics of recent immigration legislation who feel that mass detention and deportation runs counter to civil rights and humanitarian concerns and could produce a scenario similar to that seen in California during the 1990s, where the passage of Proposition 187 led to a bipartisan effort to prevent state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Arizona’s immigration legislation has created what some legal scholars have referred to as a policy “air-lock” when comparing state and federal immigration law. Although states have always possessed inherent authority to enforce state laws equally upon citizens and noncitizens, immigration law is often only enforced by federal agencies and lacks comprehensive platforms for upward delegation. Upward delegation signifies the transfer of authority from federal to state government, although the only federal immigration authority that states cannot use is regulation of noncitizens’ entry and exit from the United States. The rarity of upward delegation has caused states to often avoid immigration enforcement to prevent potential conflict regarding the constitutionality of state action that overlaps federal authority. The air-lock results from SB 1070 essentially mandating that the state enforce immigration law to the maximum extent consistent with federal standards, in response to numerous findings by the courts that states have not fully utilized their immigration enforcement authority. This means effective utilization of concurrent enforcement authority provided under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hines v. Davidowitz, yet federal preemption of concurrent state authority is generally accomplished by a showing that state law conflicts with federal law or that there is clear evidence the federal government intends to occupy a given field, to which SB 1070’s architects claimed that federal non-enforcement of immigration law equates to an open field. Since the law’s passage, the federal government has filed suit on the grounds that SB 1070 is preempted by federal law, yet the outcome of this case is as yet undecided. In the event that federal preemption is used to nullify SB 1070, it is likely that law will serve as a case study for both attainment and loss of upward delegation.

5. Conclusion

The Arizona Immigration Law itself has numerous negative impacts. It has signified the beginning of the end of the U.S. as we know it today. The violation of the three-branch system is evident in the decision to allow Arizona’s policy around illegal immigrants to be out of sync with the federal law regarding the same issue. The three branches of government – legislative, executive, and judicial – are charged with creating laws, enforcing those laws, and interpreting those laws, respectively. The Constitution assumes that the rules created by the three branches of the federal government will preempt contradictory rules created by state governments. The Arizona Immigration Law, also known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, was signed into law on April 23, 2010, and was later modified by a federal court ruling on September 18, 2012.

This essay has main key points regarding the Arizona immigration law and how this law was a precursor to what has not been implemented by the present administration through state-level immigration laws. The primary reasons and objective of the Arizona immigration law were to make attrition through enforcement the official policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona, maintaining a clause of discouraging and deterring the unlawful entry and presence of illegal aliens into the United States as far as possible. The need to study the Interstate Compact on Cost Neutral Immigration Enforcement to analyze the monetary and legal implications of illegal immigration on the State of Arizona and to pursue reimbursement from the federal government and/or from sending countries. This essay argues that the immigration law violated the three branches of government and has opened the door to racial profiling and disparate treatment of Latinos. This essay concludes that the Arizona immigration law is unconstitutional and is a violation of the Supremacy Clause.