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Arizona "Papers, Please" Law May Hit Tech Workers
dcblogs writes "H-1B workers and foreign students may think twice about attending school or working in Arizona as a result of the state's new immigration law. If a police officer has a 'reasonable suspicion' about the immigration status of someone, the officer may ask to see proof of legal status. Federal immigration law requires all non-US citizens, including H-1B workers, to carry documentation, but 'no state until Arizona has made it a crime to not have that paperwork on your person,' said immigration lawyer Sarah Hawk. It means that an H-1B holder risks detention every time they make a 7-11 run if they don't have their papers, or if their paperwork is out of date because US immigration authorities are behind in processing (which condition does not make them illegal). The potential tech backlash over the law may have begun yesterday with a call by San Francisco City Atty. Dennis Herrera 'to adopt and implement a sweeping boycott of the State of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses.'"
Federal immigration law requires that all non-US citizens, including H-1B workers, to carry documentation, but 'no state until Arizona has made it a crime to not have that paperwork on your person,'
So it already was a crime.
The real news is a state is now making an effort to enforce the law, since the executive branch of the federal government has quite clearly failed to fulfill their constitutional duties on the matter, in regards to enforcing the US borders.
Appearing reasonably white is no protection.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That's not true, they can ask for your documentation in course of an "lawful encounter" (the actual language of the law), which is a novel standard and seems pretty ambiguous. If a cop breaks into your house without a warrant, then he can't ask for your passport. Any other situation appears to be fair game.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
US citizens can also be stopped and asked for their papers too, and can be arrested, and held until they can prove their citizenship.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
When I visit Canada, China, etc. If I don't have my passport with me, and an official requires it of me I could be detained and eventually handed off to my government to get new papers or explain to them where my papers are located.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Arizona is just enforcing fed law:
(d) Every alien in the United States who has been registered and fingerprinted under the provisions of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, or under the provisions of this Act shall be issued a certificate of alien registration or an alien registration receipt card in such form and manner and at such time as shall be prescribed under regulations issued by the Attorney General.
(e) Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d).
http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-29/0-0-0-8289.html
If we are not going to enforce the laws, take them off the books.
And that guy was stopped by the ICE (a federal department, not state) doing the job they always do. Funny how it's suddenly a problem. More sensationalism at work.
Agreed. Arizona is just looking out for their own good. The amount of drugs and violence brought over by illegals is astounding. It has nothing to do with race/ethnicity/etc, it's just defending communities.
So, really, fuck you Arizona - through no fault of my own, you feel entitled to detain me because of the failings of the government system? Because I can't get documentation of my status?
Blah.
It's already written into the bill... they need a REALLY good reason to suspect you; they are not allowed to "suspect" you do to skin color, race, or country of origin...
Now proving what their suspicion was in court may be difficult, but you'd better believe it'll be the first question out of the court appointed lawyer's mouth.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Given that the US is a country of immigrants and therefore anyone and everyone looks like an immigrant, police can detain you until you prove that you are a citizen.
I'm a native-born US citizen of Italian descent who is frequently mistaken for a Latino, even by actual Latinos who come up to me and start speaking Spanish. I also travel through Arizona on a fairly regular basis. I will be curious to see if I'm ever asked to prove my citizenship. Sure hope I'm not going to have to start carrying a passport to in order to keep from being shipped to Mexico.
Showing a drivers license will suffice. One of the rumors floating around about this bill is that everyone will theoretically have to carry a birth certificate or citizenship papers with them, but that's not the case. The police will ask for a form of ID first... which they routinely do during things like traffic stops anyway. In my state, there are random sobriety checkpoints set up where state troopers will ask to see your license and registration and ask if you've been drinking. And they've been doing this for decades. So it's not like Americans have never had to deal with the inconvenience of police asking for ID before.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Please don't exaggerate if you haven't read the law. The new Arizona law is essentially the same as the existing federal law that is not being enforced. The law gives police the right to ask for papers ONLY when they lawfully stop somebody. They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status. However, for example in case of traffic violation or something like that they can.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
It mirrors the requirement that immigrants carry papers, but that's not the issue. The part that's problematic is that this law allows cops to ask anyone that they interact with to show their papers, whether they are required to have them or not.
The case you link explicitly notes that the person in question was not required to carry or produce papers, only to identify himself verbally. The opinion makes pretty clear that they were upholding Nevada's "stop-and-identify" statute on the understanding that the "identify" part included no requirement to produce ID:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And what if you can't prove it? At one point, for a period of about 6 months, I was unable to get a state ID in either of the states that I lived and worked in, because the state I was born in would not give me a copy of my birth certificate without my already having an ID issued by a state or the federal govt.
You left out the best part!
Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves. Less affluent or resourceful U.S. citizens who are detained must try to maneuver on their own through a complicated system.
Well, thankfully an AC knows the laws of every single state.
Why don't you look at (for example) Arizona's legal requirements for getting a driver's license. I'll admit it took me a whole 30 seconds to get them on Google. Having a legal license from the State of Arizona does actually prove that you are either a citizen or legally in the country, because that is the only way that Arizona will issue a license to you. Idaho is the same way; no birth certificate, no green card, no legal papers = no license. So, is it completely foolproof, no. You could get your license with faked documents, or just a fake license, which just adds to your crimes, but a legal, valid license certainly does imply your legal status.
I went through the TN-1, H1-B, GC process, and always had proof of status on my person. I still do.
And I was born in the United States, yet I do not have a proper birth certificate...
What's your point? That a single datum makes data?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Maybe you should read the Arizona law. Maybe the Arizona law tells you. Maybe reading things before commenting on them / bitching about them is just good practice. What do you think?
Arizona Revised Statutes Section 2, 11-1051 (B) ... A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
4. A VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
For states that are not on the border, immigration may not seem like it's a bad problem
It's pretty sad when even people who oppose illegal migration fall into this trap.
Immigration is not a problem; immigrants pay, are productive members of society, and get deported if they break any laws.
The problem is illegal migration. Illegal migration is not immigration. Stop confusing the two.
Because only the federal government can make laws about immigration, according to the US constitution.
According to an AZ lawyer friend, this law won't last 15 seconds in court before its invalidated.
The US constitution provides that: ...and a bunch of other stuff.
1) The "Papers Please" part of the law is unconstitutional. If you refuse and are arrested, you can most likely sue for breaches of civil rights, regardless of AZ law.
2) AZ has no constitutional authority to pass this law.
3) It violates the 14th ammendment.
Between laws banning the antichrist (actually Im not sure if thats AZ, but lol if it is), the nutty "president must have birth certificate" (Hmm, yes I'm SURE AZ has the authority to make federal election laws) and this, plus the fact that Sherrif Arpaio *STILL* isn't in Jail for massive breaches of every god damn law regulating police powers and police brutality ever concieved, AZ is apparently a pretty embarassing place to be a lawyer right now.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
> They CANNOT walk up to a random person on the street and check their immigration status.
Wrong. We have a stop & identify statute. They can use that to check on anyone they want.
See also: the sweeps that are performed whenever our sheriff is up for reelection.
I live in Miami, a city with one of the highest percentages of Hispanics in the country. Most crime in my area is committed by Russians. Despite your assertion, study after study has shown that Hispanics, and illegals in particular, are far less likely to be criminals then the over-all population. This makes sense, if you're illegal, you don't want to rock the boat and get yourself deported. See http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022// . To quote:
"Nearly all of the most heavily Latino cities have low or even extremely low crime rates, and virtually none have rates much above the national average. Eighty percent Latino El Paso has the lowest homicide and robbery rates of any major city in the continental United States. This is not what we would expect to find if Hispanics had crime rates far higher than whites. Individual cities may certainly have anomalously low crime rates for a variety of reasons, but the overall trend of crime rates compared to ethnicity seems unmistakable."
"And with double digit unemployment I'm really fucking sick of jobs like construction, which used to be filled by hard working Americans that actually paid taxes"
From a pure fiscal point of view, there wasn't a chance in hell that construction workers were net tax payers. Illegal immigrants don't receive EITC, Medicaid, or food stamps, and still pay sales taxes. Not only that, put the money saved accrues to owners, who probably pay taxes on it at a pretty high rate. Not only that, but from what I understand, illegals work with fake SS numbers, and so their paychecks are automatically withheld. But because they're not actually tax payers, they don't get the refund that anyone working in construction would be entitled to.
Also, because of the housing burst, there is a huge surplus of housing. If I remember correctly, Arizona has enough houses to last for another 15 years. You know what would create more construction jobs? Population growth! Which also boosts demand by creating more potential customers, creating jobs for everybody in every sector...
"Hell it is so fucking bad here that guys yell "Immigra!" in front of construction sites for a joke. Yell Immigra around here and you can watch an entire job site turn into a ghost town in seconds, they just scatter like fucking deer."
They scatter like *people* trying to feed their family. It's perfectly fine to oppose illegal immigration, but the immigrants themselves are nearly all just hard working people trying to create a better life for themselves. Dehumanizing and mocking them isn't necessarily racist, but it's fucking cruel. To paraphrase the Bible, "Be kind to immigrants, remember that you were once a slave in Egypt".
"So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move."
No. Arizona gets far more money from the federal government then they pay in taxes, as well as billions of dollars in defense related pork, and in exchange for that, they have to follow basic standards with regards to treating their citizens. If they want to succeed, then fine. But if they start violating central tenants of our constitution and national values, then they better expect to be slapped down by our courts and federal agencies.
"So scream "racist" all you want, I don't give a fuck. I've known too many folks that have lost their homes and are living barely better than animals because all the non McJobs have been given to illegals, whom the owners can treat like shi
Maybe you should read the law? I've seen a whole ton of FUD from racist groups like La Raza out there, and none of it is based on any reading of the law itself.
The law makes specific provision to allow officers the leeway to not worry about immigration in the case of witnesses, etc: "a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation. "
Secondly, it establishes quite clearly what the police are looking for:
A person is presumed to not be an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency any of the following:
1. A valid Arizona driver license.
2. A valid Arizona nonoperating identification license.
3. A valid tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal identification.
4. If the entity requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance, any valid United States federal, state or local government issued identification.
Your quote: "...but you speak with an accent...":
Law text: A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not solely consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.
The law is pretty clear: the trigger for "lawful contact" is the occurrence of something meeting Terry Stop standards. What the police are looking for is what they are legally allowed to ask for anyways at such a stop.
Now if you have problems with a specific section of the law, please point the section out? I've provided the text of the law for you, fully linked above.
Why aren't anyone punishing the employers who are enabling these illegal immigrants? Why aren't you throwing them in prison for violating the law? [...] Change these charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Throw the responsible parties in jail (including the illegal immigrants), from foremen to CEOs, single citizen hiring maids, gardeners, nannies etc.
As a small business owner, I think you are asking an awful lot.
Employers are not Federal Immigration Officials. We simply don't have the ability to determine someone's residency status beyond what we already do (and apparently ICE doesn't do such a stellar job, either).
Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to hire illegals, and I fulfill my requirements with respect to the I-9 form. But if an applicant
And do you really verify the immigration status of everyone who works on your property? Would you even know how to? My Hispanic maid, handyman, and gardener are business owners, so I remit payment directly to a business (i.e. no I-9 or 1099s need to be completed). I'm guessing that they are legal, but I have no way of knowing for sure, and no way to check.
I guess where I'm going to with this ramble is that employers are not Government Immigration Officials. Tell us what you want us to do, and we'll do it, but don't get upset when employees figure out how to circumvent the system.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock