Arizona SB 1070: Here's what it actually says...

If you want to see the actual bill as passed by the Arizona legislature and signed by the Governor, you can go here.

I have attempted to summarize it as much as possible below.

Changes are made to Sec 2. Title 11, Chapter 7 of Arizona Revised statutes, amended by adding article 8.
8.a) No official or agency of any Arizona juridiction may adopt policies that limit or restricts enforcement of federal immigrations laws.
8.b) When lawful contact made by Arizona law enforcement, where reasonable suspicion exists that the person may be an illegal alien, a reasonable attempt will be made to determine the person’s immigration status.
8.c) If it is determined that the person is an illegal alien and convicted of a violation of Arizona jurisdiction law, they shall be immediately transferred to ICE or the US Border Patrol.
8.d) Notwithstanding other law, law enforcement may securely transport an alien in their custody to a federal facility in Arizona or other point of transfer to federal custody outside law enforcement agency jurisdiction.
8.e) Law enforcement may without warrant arrest a person under probable cause to believe that person has committed a public offense that makes person eligible for removal from the U.S.
8.f) Except as restricted by Federal law, Arizona officials may not be prohibited or restricted from transmitting, requesting or storing immigration-related status information for the following purposes:
8.f.1) Determining eligibility for any public benefit provided by any political subdivision of Arizona or the Federal government.
8.f.2) Verification of claim of residence or domicile is required under Arizona law or judicial order pursuant to a civil or criminal proceeding in Arizona.
8.f.3) Confirming ID of any person who is detained.
8.f.4) If person confirmed to be an alien, determining whether the person is in compliance with the Federal Registration Laws prescribed by Title II, Chapter 7 of the Federal Immigration and National Act.
8.g) A person may bring an action to challenge any official or agency of an Arizona jurisdiction that adopts or implements a policy that restricts full enforcement of federal immigration law. If an official or agency has been found in violation, the court shall:
8.g.1) The person who brought the action recover court costs and attorney feeds
8.g.2) The entity will pay a civil penalty of not less than $1000 or more than $5000 for each day the limiting policy was in effect after the filing.
8.h) The court shall collect civil penalties from 8.g and remit them to the Dept. of Public Safety for the Gang and Immigration Intellgence Team Enforcement mission fund.
8.i) A law enforcement officer is indemnified for reasonable costs and expenses, incurred by any action so long as the officer is judged to have acted in good faith of enforcement of the law.
8.j) Guides implementation.

Sec. 3. Title 13, Chapter 15, Arizona Revised statutes modified as below:
15.a) In addition to any violation of federal law, a person is guilty of trespassing if the person is both:
15.a.1) Present on public of private land in Arizona.
15.a.2) In violation of 8 USC Sec 1304(e) or 1306(a).
15.b) In enforcement of this section final determination of an alien’s immigration status shall be determined by either:
15.b.1) A law enforcement officer who is authorized by the federal government to veiry or ascertain an alien’s immigration status.
15.b.2) A law enforcement officer or agent communicating with US ICE or US Border Patrol pursuant to 8 USC 1373(c).
15.c) A person sentenced pursuant to this section is not eligible for suspension or commutation of sentence until sentence is served.
15.d) In addition to any other penalty prescribed by law, the court shall order the reason to pay jail costs and an additional assessment in the following amounts:
15.d.1) At least $500 for first violation.
15.d.2) Twice the amount from 15.d.1 if person was previously subject to an assessment pursuant to this subsection.
15.e) The court will collect these assesements and distribute them to Dept. of Public Safety, subaccount for Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission appropriations.
15.f) This section does not apply to a person who maintains authorization from the federal government to remain in the United States.
15.g) Violation of this subsection is a class 1 misdemeanor unless
15.g.1) A class 3 felony is committed while in possession of
15.g.1.a) A dangerous drug as defined in 13-3401
15.g.1.b) Precursor chemicals used in manufacture of methamphetamines in violation of 13-3404.01.
15.g.1.c) Possesses a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument as defined in 13-105.
15.g.2) A class 4 felony is committed if the person
15.g.2.a) Is convicted of a second or subsequent violation of this section
15.g.2.b) Within 60 months prior to violation, has been deported from the US pursuant to 8 USC 1229a or has accepted a voluntary removal from the US to 8 USC 1229c.

Sec.4 Section 13-2319 AZ revised statutes amended:
Insert section E:
E) Notwithstanding any other law, a peace officer may lawfully stop any person who is operating a motor vehicle if the officer has reasonable suspicion to believe that the person is in violation of any civil traffic law.
Redesignate section E as section F.

Sec. 5 Title 13 Chapter 29 AZ Revised Statues amended by adding 13-2928 and 13-2929

Section 13-2928 makes it illegal to pick up anybody from a street, roadway or highway for the purpose of work at a different location if the vehicle impedes normal traffic. It also makes it illegal to enter a vehicle under the same circumstances. Finally, it makes it illegal for an illegal immigrant to seek work in a public place or perform work as an employee or independent contractor. 13-2928 will be a class 1 misdemeanor.

Section 13-2929 makes it illegal for anyone to attempt to, or actually perform any of the following if they know or recklessly disregard a person’s illegal immigration status: transport, move, harbor, conceal, shield, or encourage to reside in this state unlawfully.

Modification of Sec 23-212 to define entrapment of businesses by law enforcement agencies under certain circumstances such as law enforcement initiating idea to commit the offense, with or without inducement and it can be shown that employer was not predisposed to commit offense prior to contact with law enforcement agents.

Section 23-214 is modified to specify that employers shall participate in e-verify and maintain the record of verification of the employee’s employment or at least three years, whichever is longer.

Section 28-3511 modified to permit the removal, impoundment or immobilization of a vehicle if the person is in violation of a criminal offense and is transporting, moving, concealing, harboring or shielding or attempting to do so of an alien in a vehicle if the person knows or recklessly disregards the fact that the alien is residing in the U.S. unlawfully.

AZ SB1070: If it's making people this mad, it must be a good thing.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” – wrote Thomas Paine during the U.S. War of Independence at a time when Continental forces had not yet won a major battle. After the Christmas Eve assault on a vastly superior force of Hessians, mercenaries on King George’s payroll and possessed of a ferocious reputation, the Continentals got into the habit winning far more frequently than losing.

Today the people of the United States are now faced with a similar situation within the narrow context of illegal immigration. I will not go into why so many people from Mexico, Central and South America are trying to get into the U.S. other than to say that there are job opportunities here that don’t exist in their own countries.

In 1954, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service executed Operation Wetback (what a HORRIBLE name), which focused on removing 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the southwest. It focused, unsurprisingly, on Mexicans in the nation illegally.
In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 restricted, for the first time, the number of Mexicans immigrating to the U.S. It has failed to work.
In 1976, President Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Congress tried to grant amnesty to millions of undocumented workers. The proposed legislation was so unpopular that it failed to get out of committee.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control act of 1996, which granted amnesty to about 2.3 million undocumented workers but was also supposed to restrict business from knowingly hire them. It has failed to work.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It increased Border Patrols, built a 20-mile long fence from the Pacific, changed rules for immigration detention. It has failed to work.
In 2005, President George Bush signed the REAL ID act, which further restricted political asylum, increased immigrant enforcement rules, and imposed federal restrictions on the practice of state driver’s licenses to immigrants.
In 2006, Congress tried to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 and 2007. Both were supported by President Bush. However, since a key component of these acts were to grant amnesty to an estimated 12 million to 21 million undocumented aliens, populist backlash was unprecedented and the legislation never made it to the President’s desk.

This lists only recent attempts by the federal government to control the influx of immigrants or to address the problem of illegal immigration, In fact, the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885 prohibited the importation or migration of foreigners under contract to perform labor in the U.S. and its territories.

So, with regards to Mexican illegal immigration, the border states (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California) are now filled to the brim with Mexican illegals because it is supposedly “racist” for the United States to enforce its own sovereignty with regards to controlling who is permitted within our borders.

Since 1954, the illegal immigrants are 21 million to zero. Zero! Have you looked at Mexico’s own laws concerning illegal immigrants? That’s a topic for another blog, but suffice it to say that in Mexico, it’s a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Illegal re-entry after deportation carries a ten year sentence. Mexico maintains a nation population registry that tracks all outside tourists. Citizens of Mexico must carry an identity card. Visitors not carrying appropriate documentation are subject to arrest. Finally, foreigners may be deported without due process.

President Obama, representing the U.S. federal government, laments Arizona’s attempt to get this problem under control as “misguided”. Yet, Arizona SB1070 is fully compliant with the 4th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. SB1070 does NOT permit Arizona law enforcements officers to stop anybody at anytime and request “papers”. SB1070 does not permit officers to stop people for the purpose of identifying undocumented workers. However, SB1070 does permit officers, under circumstances of reasonable suspicion, to investigate whether a person detained for other reasons might be an illegal alien. In this case, “reasonable suspicion” can be interpreted to mean that if an officer stops a person for violating a traffic law, for example, and upon routine request for driver’s license and registration information, the driver cannot provide the license, the officer might then be permitted to inquire further as to the detainee’s citizenship status.

Since the federal government has elected through its non action to enforce its own immigration laws, the several states of the Union are obligated to protect their lawful citizenry. If that means that we get a hodge podge of immigration laws and differing levels of enforcement, there is nobody that President Obama and Congress can blame but themselves.

SB1070 is now law. Let the lawsuits begin.

Judge Napolitano of Fox News said it best. This is an embarrassment to Arizona.

It will cause Latinos, who are natural "social conservatives" to flee the GOP and seek sanctuary with the Democrats.

He predicted that it will be challenged constitutionally. He believes that either the Arizona Supreme Court, or possibly the U.S. Supreme Court will prevent this law from being enforced from the git go. In fact, he said that a challenge will probably happen "tomorrow".

Who lost? Pretty much everybody.

Who won? Even though the law will be shot down by judicial challenge, Governor Jan Brewer will win with her GOP constituency, which will help her dramatically in the primary. However, she gave her eventual Democratic opponent a huge gift.

My steadfast opposition to this bill doesn't change the fact that the federal government, by its very inaction, guaranteed that the several States are going to start trying to get this issue under control. Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 are all directly to blame, along with all the Congresses that served along those Presidents. President Obama less so only because he's only served as President for just over a year.

My steadfast opposition to this bill does not change my opinion concerning illegal immigration. If you enter this nation without its expressed permission, you are a lawbreaker and you should seek forgiveness, because in so doing you disrespected the people and the laws of this nation.

Tragedy in Arizona. SB1070 will become Law today. And it didn't have to be...

The story of SB1070 is a testimony of the complete and utter failure of the United States federal government to come up with a sane solution to the problem of illegal immigration.

Let's call a spade a spade right now. Illegal immigration is actually a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. I have no hard facts or statistics to back up my next statement, but reason and prudence dictates that over 99.9999% of the people who have entered our country illegally are doing so out of desperation to find a job, any job that will put food on their family's dinner table and maybe put a decent roof over their heads. And it's American greed, on the part of private individuals and on the part of American business interests.

The homeowner that has an undocumented worker trim and maintain their yard or property because they can get the work done at a low cost is guilty for this problem.

The business that employs undocumented workers by sharing taxpayer SSN or EIN numbers, or pays them under the table for low wages is guilty for this problem.

The Latin-American community, and especially the Mexican-American community are guilty because they have done absolutely nothing to help stem the tide and in fact are actively involved in protecting them. What infuriates me is that they constantly paint this issue as evidence of racism by the government. State Senator Russel Pearce has stated frequently that "illegal immigrant" is not a race issue. It's a crime. Somehow, it seems that illegal immigrants have some kind of "right" to live here in the United States. Nothing is further from the truth. If you are not born a U.S. citizen, then you must earn the privilege. And that can't be done while living in the shadows.

The federal government is in a real rough place. Back in the 1980's, Pres. Reagan granted amnesty to roughly two million illegals, with the understanding that the gates to the country would then become more strongly guarded. Businesses and private citizens alike claim that they need the low labor costs that undocumented workers provide in order to stay competitive. And yet, the federal government has a Constitutional responsibility to be able to track the activities of every alien currently in our country.

So the federal government has done nothing for over twenty years. The number of illegal aliens in our nation has grown from an estimated two million in the 1980s to somewhere between twelve and twenty million today. The vast majority of these people are working in hotels, fast food restaurants and in the agricultural sector. But that doesn't change the fact the government has no visibility to what these people are doing in our country.

In Arizona, five of the last eight police officers who were killed in the line of duty were killed by illegal immigrants, most of whom were involved in illegal drugs or human trafficking. Additionally, in just the last couple of months the murders of several southern Arizona ranchers have been tied to drug runners who are Mexican nationals.

I want to make my position perfectly clear. SB1070 is bad legislation and bad law. I believe that it will be challenged as being in violation of Constitutional guaranteed rights to protection from illegal search/seizure. I believe that it will open the door to many instances of racial profiling. I should point out that racial profiling works, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a violation of basic civil rights.

But what is Arizona to do? Our officers and citizens are being killed by Mexican nationals who are in our state illegally. The federal government is doing very little to stem the flow across our border. It is also doing nearly nothing to help those who desparately want to work in the United States but who are also not U.S. citizens.

Catholic churches are strangely aligned with human traffickers and their drop-houses by providing sanctuary to illegal aliens. The Church is doing so for very human and compassionate reasons. The human traffickers have very different reasons. They are protecting valuable assets, nothing more than human "cattle" in their eyes.

To add insult to injury, the federal government in the form of President Obama calls SB1070 to be misguided. I disagree with that entirely. I believe that SB1070 is actually a sign of desperation, a sign of a state legislature and governor who has pleaded with the federal government for help. If the federal government would step up to the plate and actually perform it's constitutionally mandated duty to both enforce our border security as well as to provide a mechanism for people who want to work here to let them do so.

So, what would I do if I were King of America?

1. I would give American businesses until Jan 1, 2012 to verify that every single employee can be verified to either be a United States citizen or a foreign national that has a valid work-visa. After that date, any business found to employ undocumented foreign nationals will be fined daily at a rate of $100 per day per undocumented worker until the employees are terminated. Failure to solve the problem within 30 days will result in progressively higher fines and/or suspension/termination of business licenses.
2. I would provide an application process where a foreign national (but specifically Mexicans) could apply for a work visa from their own home. They would have to provide their respective national ID number. The U.S. government would have one month, upon receipt of the application, to determine if the applicant has a criminal history or pending criminal case. Upon approval, the applicant would be directed to a valid port of entry, whereupon after paying an application fee of $350.00, they would have full fingerprinting, a photograph taken. That information would then be immediately registered in a federal database. The applicant could then stay in the country for the duration of the visa provided that they checked in with ICE every 90-120 days.
3. Deportees would go into a federal database, along with their fingerprints. Once in this database, it would become part of the e-verify system, and being flagged as a deportee should be an automatic "do not hire" flag.
4. Once the applicant is an approved alien worker, they can immediately go on the list to become a United States citizen.
   

I'm sure there's more.... but that's a start.

Arizona Enforces What the U.S. Government Will Not

The State of Arizona passed Senate bill 1070, a wide-ranging illegal immigrant measure sponsored by State Senator Russell Pearce. This bill is now sitting on the desk of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, and you can be that this one is a nasty poser for her.

It makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and gives state and local law enforcement broad authority to determine an individual's legal status if there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual may be in the U.S. illegally.

Sadly, since our Federal government does not have the political will to enforce Federal law concerning border security and the problem of illegal immigration, Arizona has been forced to this difficult pass.

There have been three Arizona ranchers killed recently, and the evidence strongly points to Mexican nationals in the U.S. illegally, probably either part of the illegal drug trade or the human smuggling trade. Frustration is so high on the southern border of the state that a militant militia group is offering it's services to provide armed patrols along the border to interdict persons crossing the border. It would be laughable except that the ranchers are frustrated and scared.

Why is it that those advocates for leniency on illegal aliens steadfastly do these things?

First, they do nothing to discourage persons who contemplate coming to the U.S. illegally.

Second, once they are here, the advocates actually assist them in going underground, being paid under the table, and moving further into the heart of our country. You never hear them encouraging these good people who become law breakers by this action to turn themselves in or to return to their homeland. NEVER.

Third, they fail utterly to acknowledge that any sovereign nation has a right, and responsibility, and a duty to know the identity of any foreigner who desires admission.

Fourth, they fail to identify and condemn business and industries that employ these people.

In the face of such advocacy to promote this illegal behavior the State of Arizona has been forced to take action that it would otherwise not take.

I hate this bill, because the vast majority of illegal immigrants simply desire to find work. However, the safety and security of our people demand that we take this action, with all of it's police-state like apparatus.

God help us all.

Like it or not, the US is still a superpower. What?

In a response to a question about how the recent U.S. led "nuclear summit" would affect Middle East peace efforts, part of his response was this:

"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them, and that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

I was not aware, Mr. President, that being a military superpower was a burden. In fact, I feel that it's quite the other way around. Being a nation that generates such wealth that we can maintain such a powerful military is a privilege and blessing that allows us to share the principles of peace, equality and personal freedom throughout the world.

Of course, when the character of the government no longer represents equality and personal freedom, then maybe the fact that we are the sole superpower should be a matter of concern for all. At one time, the United States was considered a beacon, an example of a government established by the governed for the benefit of the governed, not a privileged ruling class. And the military might that backed that government was in opposition to tyranny. And that military might was only ever intended to protect our way of life, and to help other people to gain their freedom, if only by the living example that it COULD be done.

I think that Senator McCain, Obama's Republican opponent for president in the last election said it as well as can be said:

"That's one of the more incredible statements that I've ever heard a president of the United States make in modern times. We are the dominant superpower and we're the greatest force for good in the history of this country, and I thank God every day that we are a dominant superpower."

Amen, Brother McCain.