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Arizona's alarm bell for immigration reform
By Edward Alden
New America
Media/Council on Foreign Relations
Apr 29, 2010
The only good thing
about SB 1070, signed Saturday night by Republican Governor Jan Brewer,
is that it may finally wake up the whole country to the consequences of
the current approach to illegal immigration, in which ever tougher
border enforcement is seen as the only solution to the problem. That
approach is gravely flawed. Instead, enforcement without a broader
vision of reform that would include new legal opportunities to immigrate
and a sensible program of earned legalization for some already in the
country will leave the United States, and the state of Arizona, less
secure.
The new Arizona law
essentially gives the police unfettered powers to demand that anyone,
any time, and anywhere must be ready to produce documents proving they
are legally resident in the United States. That is an almost
unimaginably un-American expansion of police authority, yet it is the
logical end result of a policy that relies solely on enforcement.
How could the political
leadership of Arizona--including the one-time champion of immigration
reform, Senator John McCain--have arrived at a place where this law was
seen as a good idea? The answer is that, to a greater extent than
anywhere else in the country, it has become fixated on the idea that
enforcement alone can solve the state's problems with illegal
immigration. Yet Arizona itself has been a victim of that approach.
For much of the 1990s,
while anger simmered in Texas and California voters passed Proposition
187 to deny health and education benefits to illegal immigrants and
their children, Arizona was largely indifferent. It is easy to see why.
In 1992, only about 8 percent of all illegal border crossers were
apprehended in Arizona. The long stretches of uninhabited desert
discouraged all but the most determined crossers. California, in
comparison, where crossing was relatively easy, had more than half of
all the illegal traffic, nearly 600,000 apprehensions.
In response to the
growing anger in California, the Clinton administration in 1994 launched
Operation Gatekeeper, which involved building fences and beefing up the
Border Patrol, and succeeded in shutting off many of the California
routes. As a result, the border crossers simply moved to the east. By
2000, Arizona was getting almost 45 percent of the illegal
crossings--more than 700,000 apprehensions--while California had fallen
to less than 25 per cent.
The success in
California had two big consequences for Arizona. First, it made Arizona
the nation's Ground Zero in the fight over illegal immigration, as
evidenced by the emergence there of the "Minutemen" and
publicity-seeking local cops like Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa
Country. Second, by forcing illegal migrants to seek routes through the
desert, it spawned human smuggling gangs that could charge several
thousand dollars to see their clients safely (sometimes) to the other
side, creating an organized crime problem where none had existed. The
horrific murder last month of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz appears to
have been carried out by a smuggler who had brought either illegal drugs
or illegal migants in from Mexico.
The unsurprising
response was that Arizonans demanded, and got, California-style
enforcement. Much of the Arizona-Mexico border is now protected by
fences. Over the past five years, the total number of Border Patrol
agents has doubled to more than 20,000, with about 4,000 of those
stationed in Arizona. Along with the weak economy, which has reduced the
attractiveness of the United States, border enforcement has been
successful, in Arizona and elsewhere, in bringing the number of illegal
border crossers down to the lowest levels since the early 1970s. In
2008, the most recent year for which breakdowns are available, the
number of apprehensions in Arizona had fallen to about 350,000, which
was more than half of the southwest border total but still a significant
drop over the past decade.
Yet all that
enforcement has just left the state feeling less secure. Will the new
law change that? It will definitely make daily life more uncomfortable
for any immigrant--legal or not--currently living in Arizona. And the
uncertainty about what constitutes acceptable proof of U.S. residence
may make the 70 percent of Americans who don't have a passport reluctant
to visit, hurting the state's tourist economy. But it will have little
or no effect on the number of illegal border crossers, who are drawn by
the work opportunities available in the whole of the United States, not
just in Arizona.
What is needed instead,
as President Barack Obama laid out on Friday, is a comprehensive
approach that includes reforms to the legal immigration system, a
broader enforcement strategy focused on the workplace, and smarter
enforcement at the border.
If there is anything
known for certain after the long U.S. experience with illegal
immigration, it is that illegal immigrants--like most legal
immigrants--come to this country hoping to find better jobs and better
pay. The challenge for U.S. policy is to realign the incentives so that
the legal opportunities for working in the United States become more
attractive and the illegal ones less so. That means offering new legal
work visas for unskilled and skilled workers, making it easier for
employers to verify that their workforce is authorized, and stepping up
penalties on employers who refuse to comply. At the border, it means
closer cooperation between U.S. and Mexican officials to crack down on
the smuggling operations, an initiative that is showing encouraging
signs of progress. And finally Congress should approve an earned
legalization program that would allow many of those already living and
working here to earn the right to remain in the United States, which
would offer a chance to move forward with a clean slate.
Obama's statement that
the Arizona law is a consequence of the federal government's failure to
act is only half true. The federal government has acted on border
enforcement. There is no other agency that has seen the same explosive
growth as the Border Patrol over the past two decades. Yet by failing to
act on the rest of the immigration reform agenda, Washington has failed
to bring the people of Arizona the greater security they are right to
demand.
This article first
appeared on Council For Foreign Relations
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