Immigration in Constitutional Law - Arizona SB 1070 - Research Paper Example

? of Lecturer] Law, Research Paper An analysis of Immigration in Constitutional Law-Arizona SB 1070 Introduction Since historical times, different U.S states have attempted to or have actually enacted laws aimed at restricting immigrations into the country. One such law was the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, often referred to as the Arizona SB 1070. It was introduced into Arizona Senate and later signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, 2010. Magana, L. Latino Politics and International Relations: The Case of Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070 (Springer, 2012). During its introduction to the Arizona Senate, this legislation aroused a lot of reactions, both support and rejection for its breadth and strictness in curbing illegal immigration. In fact, in recent historical times, the Arizona SB 1070 is perhaps the strictest of U.S immigration laws. Consequent to its strictness, the legislative Act did not only receive domestic reactions but also international attention and criticism. As a matter of fact, the Arizona SB 1070, like the other anti-illegal immigration laws faces a lot of challenges with regard to civil rights, constitutionality, legislatively, and enforceability. Id. Moreover, the law also faces serious social issue challenges. For instance, concerning civil liberties, the law has been opposed due to its condition that 14-year old aliens staying in the country for more than thirty days should register with the government and must possess their documents wherever they go. The legislation has also been criticized for promoting racial discrimination and profiling. As a result of these controversies, which resulted in different types of boycotts, the law was amended in the first week of its being signed into law. Id. This paper explores immigration in constitutional law in the United States, specifically focusing on the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona SB 1070). The core issues covered in the paper include a short history of immigration law, legislative, enforceability, legal, human rights, and the social challenges immigration law faces in the U.S. Finally, the paper will discuss the future of U.S immigration law. History of Immigration Laws Immigration law in the U.S and the surrounding issues did not start recently. Beginning in the 1790 when the Congress passed the racially instigated Naturalization Act, which categorized citizens as whites, a lot has happened concerning citizenship and immigration in the country. Fortunately, these racial laws were rendered unconstitutional after the Civil War when the Naturalization Act was successfully challenged. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act, also known as the Nationality Act of 1952 was established as the basis of all immigration and citizenship laws in the U.S. Though the law initially restricted the number of immigrants of a given nationality moving into the U.S every year, this was later changed when the Congress passed a law giving preferences to skilled immigrants. More developments would come in the subsequent decades when immigration laws allowed certified refugees and others who flee to the U.S for one reason of the other to have immigrant status. Id. Nonetheless, controversies have remained part of U.S immigration laws, as attested by the Immigrant Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the Immigration Act of 1990. Those pitted against one another in these controversies are federal and state governments, socioeconomic and political classes, and civil right activists. For instance, civil right groups opposed the California's Proposition 187 of 1994, which proposed to deny illegal immigrants schooling and medical care, which seemed to have targeted immigrants of Mexican and Latin American descent. Id. Civil right groups asserted that while the government failed to improve poor working conditions that only Latin American and Mexican laborers could work on, it insisted on denying these immigrants their rights such as education and health while they worked under such undignified conditions. Unfortunately, the signing of the Arizona SB 1070 into law caused other states to consider putting similar laws into practice, creating fear that the entire country could implement such anti-immigration laws. The question many seem to ask is which state would be next after Arizona given that many states warmed up to these immigration laws even after a federal court preliminarily preempted some controversial clauses in the law. Id. Among the states that considered Arizona’s hard-line stances against illegal immigrants are Virginia, Utah, Florida, and Texas. As mentioned earlier, the challenges the Arizona SB 1070 faced may have deterred these other states from enacting such laws. Enforcement Challenges One of the challenges that immigration laws, particularly the Arizona SB 1070 face is in the area of enforcement. First, there was a complete split on the enforcement of the bill. For instance, Arizona’s rank-and-file police officers supported the bill while associations of police chiefs opposed the bill’s enforcement, terming its provisions problematic as they would negatively impact on unprejudiced practices by law enforcement agencies in fulfilling their responsibilities to the public. Id. Second, there are fears that the enforcement of the Arizona SB 1070 would result in illegal immigrants fearing law enforcers, thus failing to report emergencies and/or whenever their lives or property are in danger. What is more, in case illegal immigrants notice some crime being committed, their negative perception of law enforcers could deter them from making reporting. Thus, trials in which illegal immigrants may be useful for successful convictions may never be concluded. Those supporting the enforcement of the immigration law assert that race is not the only indicator of illegal immigration. Hence, the notion that such laws promote racial profiling of crimes and criminals does not always hold since the absence of identification and conflicting statements among other criteria could also be used to identify illegal immigrants. In addition, those supporting the enforcement of the Arizona SB 1070 feel that such laws would prompt the government to seal the borders. Also opposed to overtly strict anti-illegal immigration laws such as the Arizona SB 1070 are religious organizations and civil liberty/rights groups. Nonetheless, members of some churches, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) support the enforcement of the law, stating that their faith’s doctrines call on all Christians to obey laws. This position, stated by Senator Russell Pearce, was however refuted by a section of the LDS Church, which stated that is was the Senator’s right to express his opinion. The LDS Church later stated that it supports a situation in which undocumented immigrants solved their issues through the legal means before continuing to live and work in the country. On the other hand, the Catholic Church, through the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, denounced the law from its inception, terming it draconian. Further, the Catholic bishops feel that such a law would result in many unlawful arrests, searches, and seizures. Finally, most Christian groups feel that the law goes against the Christian teachings of love, justice, and neighborliness. Id. Civil Rights Violation Concerns Also opposed to immigration laws such as the Arizona SB 1070 are civil rights and liberties groups. An example of these groups is the National Association of Latino, which has since termed such laws unconstitutional as they infringe on the civil rights and liberties of Arizonans. Strange enough, there are instances in which the law has been compared with the Apartheid law in South Africa as some of its sections require immigrants to walk with their documents all the time, situation reminiscent of how pre-war Nazi Germany treated the Jews. Worse still, such requirements may cause people to turn against one another in suspicion that an immigrant does not have the right papers. Id. Similarly, there are groups that have supported the Arizona SB 1070, claiming it is not only carefully crafted but also reasonable and should be enforced. These groups assert that the law does not empower officers to arbitrarily stop, search, or arrest citizens without cause and thus, it does not promote ethnic or racial profiling of immigrants. In fact, according to Steve Montenegro, a Republican in the Arizona House of Representatives says the bill has nothing to do with racial profiling. Those supporting the law have also come out to vehemently refute the comparison of the law with Nazi Germany, notwithstanding how unconstitutional the Arizona SB 1070 could be. Social Impacts and Issues There are several social issues and challenges that have arisen as a result of the enactment of immigration laws such as the Arizona SB 1070. These social issues are evidenced by the many protests and boycotts that followed the tabling and the enactment of the bill. In fact, the protests peaked in Phoenix during the bill’s signing. In most of these protests, the anti-illegal immigration measures in the law were termed as racist. Id. Although some amendments were later made on the law, this action did little to reduce the protests. As a matter of fact, the protests spread to other cities. Cities such as Los Angeles even attracted more anti-immigration law protests than even Phoenix. The other cities that experienced large protests were Dallas, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The intensity of these protests was felt up to the White House when a small group of protesters planned an act of disobedience in front of the White House. The objective of this group, led by Luis Gutierrez, the Illinois Democratic Congressman, was to propel President Obama to implement sweeping immigration reforms. Cities such as Los Angeles, Oakland, Minneapolis, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle organized boycotts of Arizona by restricting the movement of their citizens to Arizona on work-related visits. Moreover, these cities banned businesses with organizations with headquarters in Arizona. Among the Arizona organizations that opposed the Arizona SB 1070 and the subsequent boycotts for their negative effects included the National Council of La Raza and the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Among the social impacts of the Arizona SB 1070 and other immigration bills include a drop in the percentage of church attendance figures across the country, more so churches with big proportions of Hispanics and other immigrant communities. Similarly, there were reported drops in health and school attendance in neighborhoods and communities mostly inhabited by immigrant communities. Some explained this drop to illegal immigrants moving out of Arizona to other states or back to Mexico. For fear of being victimized, many immigrants started registering for party affiliation soon after the bill was signed into law Id. Finally, the law affected student and worker population as workers holding H-1B visas became vulnerable to being caught in public without their papers, which they do not carry since they are hard to replace when lost. Constitutional/Legality Issues The Arizona SB 1070 has also faced a lot of legal challenges questioning its constitutionality. For instance, the law has been said to breach the clause that establishes the supremacy of the federation by circumventing federal immigration laws. The First Amendment’s provision for freedom of speech has also been violated by the law because it exposes speakers to scrutiny based on their language and accent. The law also violates the clause that provides for the rights of minority nationalities and races as contained in the Fourteenth Amendment and Equal Protection Clause. In fact, through the Arizona SB 1070, people of minority races and nationalities could be stopped, detained, and arrested purely on the basis of their race or origin. In addition, the law has been criticized for violating the Fourth Amendment by permitting unreasonable stops, seizures, and searches without warrants and probable cause. Id. That is, many a traveler will be randomly stopped, questioned, or even detained if suspected of being an illegal immigrant. Examples of the cases against the anti-immigration law were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the United States Department of Justice, which sued Arizona demanding that the law be declared unconstitutional. In the Department of Justice suit, a ruling granting a preliminary injunction to the most controversial portions of the law was given on July 28, 2010. The Arizona District Court’s ruling also blocked the section of the law, which empowered law enforcers to check the immigration status of those suspected, stopped, or arrested. Id. This clause was particularly blocked as many legal immigrants would be stopped, implying that the federal government would be dealing with rather many immigration cases at a time. The state of Arizona managed to file a suit to counter some of these rulings that favored the federal government. For instance, in February 2011, Arizona countered the actions of the federal government by filing a lawsuit accusing the latter of laxity in securing the U.S-Mexico border, thus allowing an influx of illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court was also dragged into the Arizona versus United States case and on June 25, 2012, it blocked Sections 3, 5(C), and 6 of the Arizona SB 1070, which demanded that an immigrant carries legal documentation and empowered law enforcers to carry out warrantless searches in certain circumstances. Id. Future of U.S. immigration law There are several implications of the Arizona SB 1070 and other similar anti-illegal immigration laws. First, because of such anti-immigration laws and the subsequent controversies and debates they arouse, immigration reform has become a common topic in both public and private circles. With the current world economic depression causing immigrants to rush to U.S borders, some US citizens support stricter anti-immigration laws. As a matter of fact, dozens of anti-immigration bills have been brought before the Congress in recent times. These bills not only have clauses for stronger border controls but also provisions that call for extensive constitutional amendments to citizenship clauses. Immigration and its laws are thus critical national issues that the authorities cannot ignore. The issues to be addressed for a brighter and more effective immigration laws transcend mere legal technicalities that often surround such legislations: rather, more must be done concerning the definition of the kind of immigrants to be accepted into the U.S. Id. It remains for the Congress and the government to manage immigration issues and laws rationally and calmly to help avoid or limit racial and ethnic tensions and xenophobia. The explosive nature of immigration issues thus makes it vital that such laws are approached with level headedness given that the current urge for reforms and the need to protect U.S borders cannot be ignored. The future of Immigration law in the country however depends on the success or failure of the Arizona SB 1070. For instance, with illegal immigrants fleeing Arizona even before the law took effect, some, more so the law’s supporters believed the law would be a success. The fleeing of illegal immigrants from Arizona could have indicated that the government can actually stop illegal immigration. Nonetheless, in the future, discriminative laws that instill fear in people should not be enacted or celebrated, regardless of their short- and long-term effects. That is, racial profiling should never be the basis of future immigration laws. Second, future immigration laws should not be overstated without considering their side effects and factors such as tough job markets and border security. Id. The U.S faces an uncertain future in its technology, life sciences, healthcare, and agriculture and other sectors if the issue of immigration laws is not elaborately and rationally addressed. For instance, stricter immigration laws could worsen the situation for employers who currently struggle with retention and recruitment of both skilled and unskilled laborers. In fact, employers may find it difficult to meet their workforce needs and business objectives if rational immigration laws are not enacted. That is, future immigration laws should not be obstacles to the various sectors and the country’s overall economic growth. With the world focused on sustainable economic growth and competitive edge, it is imperative that immigration stakeholders and law enforcers implement policies and actions that would tackle all the associated factors such as workforce challenges. Id. For instance, there could be several crucial roles that immigrants play in the U.S economy and enacting laws that would scare them would only negative serve the economic interests of the country. Conclusion Since it was signed into law by the Arizona Governor, the Arizona SB 1070 has caused a lot of controversies and debating. It has not only faced legal and constitutional challenges but also social, legislative, and human right/liberty hurdles. Among those opposed to the immigration law are the federal government, churches, business associations and firms, immigrant/minority races and ethnic groups. The law has been opposed for permitting warrantless seizures, searches, and stopping of people, who are then asked to declare their immigration status. The law also expects immigrants to always carry their documents. Luckily, an Arizona District Court and the Supreme Court blocked some of the controversial clauses of the law. Nonetheless, for more rational and non-controversial immigration laws in the future, rationality, calmness, and reasonableness are required in lawmakers and state/federal authorities, and law enforcers. Work Cited Magana, L. Latino Politics and International Relations: The Case of Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070 (Springer, 2012). Read More