Raising, or Sinking, Arizona

The Supreme Court’s long-awaited ruling on Arizona’s controversial immigration law has left some happy, others sad, and still others scratching their heads. The third group is largely populated, as you might expect, by lawyers.

The key provision of the law, which calls on police to verify an individual’s immigration status if that person is stopped for another reason, and the officer has cause to suspect the person is an illegal immigrant, was upheld by the court. Some call this a victory for Arizona, but others say that since the ruling doesn’t prevent litigation if the officer behaves unconstitutionally, the law is toothless. Three other provisions of the law were struck down, mostly on the ground that they’re already covered under federal law – which critics say the federal government isn’t enforcing.

So basically, we’ve got to call in the referee to see if the ball has actually been moved. But at least we’re talking about it.

Immigration is one of those “third-rail” subjects that most politicians seem not to want to address, mainly because it’s too difficult and almost any solution seems unfair. President Obama recently announced a plan to relax enforcement of the law on young people, especially college students, who were brought here illegally by their parents and raised as Americans. It was certainly the right thing to do, but in a political sense, it was a questionable time to do it.

We have to come up with a balanced solution that falls somewhere between deporting all illegal immigrants and declaring amnesty – and it must be clearly understood that it’s going to affect the pocketbooks of everyone who lives here. Already, farmers are complaining that a lack of laborers may force them to grow fewer crops. Replace the illegal farmworkers with American citizens? Good luck. Farmers say the average “ordinary American” who tries to do stoop labor gives up after one or two days in the field. Maybe we need a new bracero program. Fully enforce laws against employers who hire illegals? Sounds good – except how many businesses would be shut down by such actions? How much of a job creator would that be? And if illegals were replaced by presumably more expensive American citizens, how much more would the rest of us be paying for the products and services involved?

Immigration laws aren’t nearly as hard and fast as people say they would like them to be. When we need particular classes of workers, like engineers from India, for example, the laws are tweaked to accommodate the need. And it’s not new. Immediate citizenship was offered to Irish immigrants getting off the boat during the Civil War if they would simply join the Union Army.

We need to recognize that illegal workers are an integral part of our current economy, and if we’re going to make changes, we have to be very clear ahead of time about what we’ll be getting ourselves into.