The Bill of Rights and Why Arizona's Immigration Law Violates It

The Arizona immigration bill that the governor recently signed into law will not stand up to judicial appeal, most likely.  The law requires law enforcement officers to question immigration status of anyone they suspect to be an illegal immigrant.  By default, it requires all immigrants (legal or otherwise) to carry documentation of immigration status at all times.  However, it doesn’t define how one should determine whom to demand documentation from.  Anyone who doesn’t look "American" or sound "American" is apparently an open target.

Personally, I don’t know what an "American" looks or sounds like.   We come in all shapes, forms, sizes and elasticities.  We have more flavors than Baskin Robbins, and most of the people the law would affect are here legally.  Many were born here.  Many have never ever been to Mexico.  But their skin color or accent leaves them open to harassment if they don’t have proper paperwork on them at all times. 

As written, the law is ambiguous and could easily foster capricious enforcement.  The only way to enforce it is to require everyone to carry documentation of immigration status at all times.  That means that, in Arizona, if I decided to go for a walk and leave my wallet at home, I could be arrested because I could not prove my legal immigration status. 

Sounds a lot like the Third Reich. 

Not to mention that it violates the “unreasonable search and seizure” clause of the Constitution.  An accent or skin color cannot be reasonably construed as probable cause a crime has been or is being committed, thus justifying the search and seizure.  As a matter of precedent, the Supremes have ruled repeatedly that situations like that, by their nature, require a warrant.  The Arizona requirements are equivalent to allowing a law enforcement officer to knock on my door, say “You look like a murderer” and then search my house.

When the only evidence of a crime is skin color, accent or language proficiency, no evidence of a crime exists.  Any demand to produce documentation does not meet the burden of proof required for such demands. 

The only way to enforce this law is to require everyone to always have documentation at all times.  It means making sure Grandma has her papers in order.  If she goes to Phoenix for a vacation and can’t prove here citizenship or immigration status, she could end up in jail. 

The law is too broadly written and cannot withstand a review and judgment from the Supremes. 

I might be wrong, but I’ll have to wait for a challenge to it, and then endless appeals to either strike it or uphold it.

The courts work slowly, and unless someone gets an injunction staying the law, pending a court ruling, the state of Arizona will violate constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and leave itself open to extended, costly litigation. 

People sometimes forget that the word “Nazi” derives from the same root as “nationalism”.  Hitler rose to power in a time of economic turmoil, in part by convincing people that their financial troubles came from non-Aryans.  That the Semitic minority was the source of all ills.  And no one questioned him much when he segregated them in ghettos or even when he had them marched into gas chambers by the millions.

I’m not suggesting that anything like that will happen in Arizona, but the Arizona law is the first step down a precariously slippery slope.   The precedent poses a danger in and of itself. It demonizes an entire ethnic group that makes up about a third of the population.

It's petty, arbitrary, venomous, mean-spirited, unenforceable, ill-conceived and, ultimately, unconstitutional  .  

Above and beyond that, it deprives every citizen in the state of a basic civil right:  freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, a freedom that, among others, sparked the Revolutionary War.  The Bill of Rights codified one of the reasons our founders went to war for independence.  After living through despotism where the king’s agents did what they wanted with impunity, the framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the government or its agents could not arbitrarily decide who looked like a criminal.

The Fourth Amendment says that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The words seem pretty clear to me.  The Arizona immigration law runs totally counter to that succinct and powerfully elegant statement.  The law deprives citizens and legal immigrants of the right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures”.  It deprives them of the right that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause”.

The law is constitutionally flawed and profoundly unjust.  It places the burden of proof for legal status on the individual, not on the state to show otherwise, as is the case in other criminal prosecutions.  If one is accused of murder or theft, the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor.  A defendant does not have to prove innocence.  The state has to prove guilt.

You can agree with me or not.  I don't really care.  But I defy you to convince me that anything I've said isn't true.  Racism and nationalism walk hand in hand just below the surface.

I’m guessing the law is largely a political maneuver by politicians facing re-election who need a hot-button issue to rally around.  I’m also guessing that they know that it will be overturned because of the constitutional holes one could drive a bus through.  But little is liable to happen before the November elections.  And if a judge grants an injunction delaying implementation of the law, they’ll get the added bonus of being able to use the phrase “judicial activism” in a pejorative way ad infinitum. 

Meanwhile, the implicit racism simmers.  I will have to give it to them, though:  they’ve found a new way to play the race card.

Hitler would be proud.

Not My Cup of Tea

It's tea party time again, and the rabble-rousers are out in force.  Tiresomely so.

They offer little besides pointless rants.  They scream about taxes being too high, but don't recognize that about half of households in the US pay no net taxes.  The ones that do rant about paying taxes for someone else.  But they seldom inconvenience themselves with facts.

The simple facts are that individuals pay some of the lowest taxes as a percentage of GDP in about 50 years.  Corporations, who whine incessantly about taxes pay less than they have since 1936.  The dollar amount may be more, but their income has gone up geometrically since then, thus the taxes.

I don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else.  But I realize that without them, my partner might not have medical coverage through the VA.  Or my mother's Social Security check might not show up.

Americans are taxed at a lower rate than most industrialized counties.  25-30% is the norm for them.  Plus VAT taxes.

The average tax rate in the US is under 7%.  Since we have one of the highest poverty levels of any industrialized first-world country, we collect less tax per person than just about anybody.

We also have the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of the “working poor” of any modern country.  The “working poor” often do not pay any taxes.  Because they have no money.  It might be evidence of a progressive tax system, but it doesn’t pay the rent.

Those are the facts, inconvenient as they might be. 

I pay more than that, but I also live above the poverty level.  Jesus said that "for everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." (Luke 12:48)

I can't argue with Him.  One seldom wins arguments with a deity.

That religious belief translates into a political position.

Any time any politician has tried to take power from corporate interests, the corporations have launched fear campaigns aimed at the sheep who largely make up the Tea Party movement.  They believe the half-truths and out-right lies that come from the right.  They don’t question the disinformation or even think about the broader picture.

They may have some education, but I'm left to wonder what good came from educating them to be sheep.  They seem to lack the perspective that leads to independent thought.  I was taught in college to be an independent thinker.  That quality is the primary benefit of education.

Personally, I'm mad as hell at what has happened to our economy and how it happened. The last administration turned a blind eye to the avalanche about to bury us.  Greed ran unregulated and unchecked.  People lost their jobs, their homes, their cars and everything else they had.  They still are, but at a slower pace than last month.

They had to start over again, whether they were 30 or 60 years old.

But I am not a sheep.  I will go back to the New Testament again:  "Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? and do you not remember?" (Mark 8:18)  I was not raised to be a sheep, and I won't ever be one.  My parents did a better job than they probably wanted to:  I question every thing and want to get to the truth, not just to the "easy".  I’m what they call in the South “mouthy”.

Easy blame is flying down the streets these days.  It's almost a traffic hazard.  And the primary proponents and instigators of it are the corporations and corrupt politicians who spin dishonesty and greed into a good thing. But I hate to tell all the Gordon Gekko’s, “Greed is not good”.

It pollutes the soul.  It corrupts the mind.  It distorts reality.  It does nothing to edify the individual or benefit the larger society that we belong to, whether we want to acknowledge that we belong to one or not.

My well-being is tied to my neighbor's well-being.  Theirs is tied to their neighbors'.  At the end of the day, I live in the middle of a massive web of interdependence.  As do we all.

If you want to protest, set up camp outside Goldman-Sachs, the surviving investment bank that will become the paradigm of greed and fraud that got us where we are.  If you can find AIG (since they conveniently got rid of all signage everywhere), sit at their front door.  Find a Lehman's executive and camp out across the street to keep him company during his early, unexpected retirement.

Those are the real villains in this horror story; that a small group of old men screwed an entire national economy and an entire nation befuddles me, still.

If you want to vent, vent on them and not on the people who are trying to pick up the pieces and look out for your best interests.  Quit whining and do something constructive.  Recognize and deal with the bitter irony that the rabid deregulation that began with Reagan led us to this point:   right off the cliff into the proverbial abyss.

Assign blame where it's due.  Don't be sheep.  That's the easiest but ultimately most insincere path.

Have your tea party and then tell me what you accomplished.  What did you do?  Other than cost everyone else money to provide protection so you could rant?  What accomplishments do you have to show for your rabble-rousing?

Go after the people who created the problem, not the ones that are trying to fix it.

Be mad, but be careful where you direct your anger.  Go after the real problem, not the easy target.  Do something that matters.  Don’t just bitch.  Do what is difficult and not simply what is convenient.

I’m mad, myself.  In the words of the immortal Dixie Chicks, “I’m not ready to make up.  I’m not ready to make nice.  I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it any more.”  That anger leads me to support financial reform, but it doesn’t come between me and common sense.  I can be pissed off about the bailouts while recognizing that they were necessary to keep the entire global economy from imploding. 

If the TP movement had any substance, it would look beyond anger and see the “what-if-not” reality.  It would be focusing on providing solutions instead of simply ranting.  It would be constructive, not destructive.  It would seek to thoughtfully edify, not recklessly tear down.

To date, it has done nothing positive.  It refuses to recognize the complexity of the financial crisis or where its origins lie.  It refuses to recognize that a total meltdown was averted.  That the country is in much better shape than it was a year ago.

In the words of Shakespeare, “it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

As I said, I’m mad, but I’m not an idiot.  I know how and why the economy collapsed, more so than I want to.  And I know why bailouts were necessary.  Distasteful, but necessary.  I had to swallow a lot of bile when it became abundantly clear that, without intervention, the entire financial system in the US would collapse, dragging the global economy down with it.

I didn’t like it, and still don’t, but intervention was the lesser of two evils.

The effects of not bailing out AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler and others would have been catastrophic.  The markets would have remained in free-fall for much longer than they did, and ordinary people would not have recovered billions and possibly trillions in losses to retirement portfolios.

Extraordinary times have always called for extraordinary actions.  That is not a new concept.  It goes back as far as recorded history.  But it’s one that the TPer’s refuse to accept.  Or, perhaps, have never considered.  I have to wonder sometimes what dark closet they stumbled out of with no historical frame of reference.

And I also wonder how many of them have consistently done their duty to vote.  If they are so virulently opposed to apparently everyone in elected office, where were they when the votes to elect them were being cast?  I have voted since I could because I’ve believed it gives me a legitimate place from which to bitch about politicians I don’t like.  I didn’t vote for them.  But I voted.  So I’m entitled to bitch.

This mess that we’re all trying to put back together didn’t get to be a mess overnight.  It is the byproduct of lax oversight meeting overt greed.  The house of cards we started building 10 years ago couldn’t support its own weight and finally collapsed.  It took the economy with it.

Franklin Roosevelt had a tough re-election after his first term.  We were not yet at war, and the Depression was still raging.  During that time, he invented the “fire-side chats” to talk directly to the American people by radio, a technology that was in its infancy.  He baby-sat an entire country through the worst financial disaster in its history.  He was the Cheerleader-in-Chief.

That’s why I voted for Obama.  Not because of policy, although I believed healthcare was important and needed to addressed directly.  I voted for him because of his message of hope.  By the time of the primaries, I could see that we were on the precipice of a disaster.  Things were bad, but I knew they were going to get worse.

We needed hope, and he offered it.

To the Tea Party, I would say that either you elected them or you didn’t vote.  That you have unrealistic expectations from a government that you either voted for or didn’t.  (One’s as bad as the other.)  That you helped get us into this mess but want to blame it on everyone else now that the tea is ready to serve.

Cuppa?