Tonight I am going to revisit a something that I have ranted about in the past. The reason it is coming up again is because of a ruling by the US Supreme Court today regarding Arizona's attempt to curb some of the problems that we are having with illegal immigrants. Here is my rant from the time when Arizona first passed the law.
In today's ruling, the court shot down a couple parts of the of the law but upheld one piece that is probably the most controversial of the entire law. Now I want to make one thing completely clear before all of the activists jump down my throat. I am all for allowing immigrants into the country, whether that is on a permanent basis or temporary. What I am completely against is allowing those that are not here legally to remain in the country.
The part that they upheld allows (or possibly requires) an officer to check the status of those that they pull over for a traffic violation or arrest for some other violation to determine if they are in the country illegally. The officers do not have the authority to deport these people, just arrest them when they can't prove that they are here legally. All of the human rights activists are looking at this from the wrong perspective. This, to me, is a cost effective solution to assist with this huge issue. These illegal immigrants are here taking jobs away from Americans. Some of those shown on the news tonight had what is a decent paying job (I believe one was either an electrician or plumber). So the whole argument of they only take the jobs that no American wants is out the door. But not only are they taking these jobs, they are doing it without paying taxes. How do I know that? Pretty simple, if they were paying taxes the border agents would know where to go to arrest them and we wouldn't be talking about this. They are using our public improvements (roads) and facilities (schools) without paying for them. How fair is that to those of us who pay taxes? Our schools are struggling to make their budgets yet we want to argue that allowing people to stay here and use them for free is the right thing to do?
I get the concern that there could be some profiling. But let's be honest, profiling is going to happen anyway. The law, as written, is set up so that the officer has to be citing them for a ticket or arresting them. The lawyer from Arizona that was on the news was concerned that he was going to have to constantly prove that he is here legally. I have a problem with that statement. If you have a driver's license you are here legally. When they return to their patrol car they will be able to verify that the license is real and that you are the actual person on the license. Come on, you're a lawyer, I would think you were a bit smarter than that!
I stated earlier that this law is a cost effective way in which to deal with the issue of illegal immigration and I think I should explain that point a little. These officers are on the streets of their towns and cities every day. They interact with the people on a daily basis and outnumber the border patrol by a long shot. We can do something like that which doesn't add any cost or we can add thousands of border patrol agents. Which method do you think would be best?
Why don't these human rights activists do something good for a change? How about fighting to remove the $1.6 billion that the United States gives to Egypt every year and put that money to helping the homeless or improving schools. That kind of money could go a long way toward humane things right here in the United States.
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