Papers please!
by digby
Twitter has made Supreme Court decision day rather entertaining. The only time I’ve ever seen this sort of instant, and often wrong, analysis was Bush vs Gore with reporters standing on the steps reading aloud from the decision and trying to figure out what it said.
the same thing happened this morning in the Arizona Immigration case. At first everyone was thrilled that the Court had struck down most of the law. But within a short period of time it was clear that it had actually left the most heinous piece of the law intact (with an opening to revisit another day.) Here’s Greg Sargent:
The court’s decision to strike down the first three provisions is welcome news to immigration advocates, and suggests the Obama administration was right to challenge the law. But advocates expected that those provisions wouldn’t survive the decision. The problem is that the court upheld the aspect of the law that is most worrisome — the part that requires police to check the status of a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is here illegally.
“The real make or break was the show-me-your-papers provision,” Frank Sharry of America’s Voice tells me. “Basically they upheld it.”
There are several problems here. The first is that this could lead to racial profiling, says Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress. “It’s not a sweeping victory for the other side, but the provision we most worried about was the one giving cops the ability to stop people and ask for their papers,” Fitz says. “We think this will lead inevitably to racial profiling, based on the way they sound and the way they look.”
Second: The fact that the High Court has suggested that there are ways for states to implement and/or interpret this law could encourage other states to try their own versions of it, rather than dissuade them from doing so. Efforts to emulate the Arizona law are alreadyunderway in a handful of states.
“There are lots of Joe Arpaios out there,” Fitz says, in a reference to the Arizona sheriff. “States will say, `Look, they upheld this.’”
It would appear that we are going to see the laboratories of democracy experiment with “your papers please” policies. If it goes the way Alabama’s did it would probably behoove everyone to start carrying their passports with them. Remember?
To arrest one foreign car-making executive under Alabama’s new tough immigration laws may be regarded as a misfortune; to arrest a second looks like carelessness.
A judge has acted to put a Japanese employee of Honda Motor Company out of his misery by dismissing immigration charges against him, three days after he was booked under Alabama’s new immigration laws that have been billed as the most swingeing in America. Ichiro Yada is one of about 100 Japanese managers of the company on assignment in southern state.
The whole thing was so embarrassing that they’re trying to reform the law.
And then there’s this:
Alabama tomato farmer Darryl Copeland looked out over his seedlings and fretted about this year’s harvest.
He was afraid his seasonal migrant workforce might not return for the summer picking season, opting to stay away rather than risk running afoul of Alabama’s stringent immigration law. The crew he awaits is picking the Florida harvest.
“I had to cut back my planting not knowing if the labor is going to be available,” said Copeland, 47, who planted just two-thirds of his 30 acres on the far side of Straight Mountain in northeastern Blount County.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do if they run every illegal out of here. It’s going to be hard to stay in business.”
Fellow Blount County tomato farmer Tim Battles planted just 12 of his 25 acres because of uncertainties engendered by the law.
“I’ve got $160,000, $170,000 in my crop,” he said. “Let’s say (immigration enforcement officers) come in July and haul everyone off. I lose it all. What they’re doing down in Montgomery (the state capital) is governing us out of a job.”
Modeled after Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law, Alabama’s statute and others also passed last year – in Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah – require state and local law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of those they suspect of being in the country illegally.
Now, Alabama is finding out whether it can live without undocumented immigrants, estimated to number 120,000 in 2010, who flocked to this southern state only in recent decades.
There’s always chain gangs.
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