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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H-1B holder risks detention every time they make a 7-11 run if they don't have their papers, or if their paperwork is out of date because US immigration authorities are behind in processing (which condition does not make them illegal).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.'"
Whatever happened to "presumed innocent until proven guilty"?
Has anyone else noticed that laws seem to be slowly changing to produce a presumption of guilt (requiring a proof of innocence) these days?
No worries, they would only would only stop people if they have "reasonable" suspicion. As long as you make sure you appear reasonably white you'll be fine.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-26-2010/law---border
Wie sagt man, ihre papiere bitte!
Coming to a municipality near you. Welcome to 2010. Age of the guilty until proven innocent, malicious until proven benign, privatized profits, socialized losses. And more ridiculous, pointless, noneducational, and downright fucktarded news stories perpetuating the mass media every day. Hatemongering, blatant flaming with red this blue that labels, and social backtracking. Man I can't wait for the future! What wonderful things will the world bring us next!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
People should read the law first. They should not turn someone's hit seeking web article into anything important. Arizona resident's have very legitimate concern about the criminal activities of organized crime in Mexico.
This is not a new story: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6848672&page=1
If you do not like the law, change it... do not disobey it.
I do not think that Indian, Russian, Chinese, etc engineers are really at risk of having their civil rights violated.
Why let facts get in the way of a sensationalist headline?
This law so clearly violates the fourth amendment that it will never hold up when the inevitable challenge comes in the courts. Some have predicted it will go all the way to the SCOTUS but I don't see it getting nearly so far.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I'm not sure why everyone's panties are getting bunched up. As the header states, Federal law already requires you to carry your visa around with you. People on H1B, tourist, and educational visas shouldn't have problems.
The issue will really hit illegals and US citizens. Citizens generally don't carry documentation around with them. Illegals generally have no documentation, or fake documentation. There's really no way to tell a non-english speaking citizen from a non-english speaking illegal. What'll probably happen is something like this:
Police: are you a US citizen?
Potential perp: si
Police: well then.
In general, the police have better things to do than walk around randomly asking people for their papers. The law really just allows them to export illegal immigrant criminals to other jurisdictions, saving the state of AZ money.
While your point is valid...I think the bigger issue with enforcment is how it effects the citezenry. Warning (here comes a hypothetical): What if you are a citizen but speak accented english, or you prefer to speak another language. A cop suspects you are an immigrant and demands immigration papers. Does the cop detain you at that point? Do you need to carry papers to prove citizenship on demand? Does this lead to frequent detention? It just seems unreasonable and ambigous to enforce something like this without encroaching the rights of citizens.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
In the past this was true, but this law exists specifically to remove that stipulation. Please read the legislation. You may be stopped "upon reasonable suspicion that an entity is not legally allowed to live within the country".
Perhaps you're confusing this with with the evidence criteria provision. The law says that race may be a factor, but it may not only be an only factor. Of course this is laughable -- people will be stopped for race, and cops will find (or create) additional evidence after-the-fact.
It's telling that even the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposes this law, as they believe it will erode trust with immigrants and distract police from more serious threats.
En libertad, como los pajarillos.
En libertad, que nadie me pregunte: a dónde vas?
I believe this is the reason that Arizona has gone Nazi on illegal immigrants. Now New Mexico on the other hand has a state constitution that embraces the bi-lingual hispanic community. Maybe you should just move there.
Arizona's new law largely mirrors existing federal law. The only people "going Nazi" are the hordes of activists that are violating Godwin's Law faster than the illegals that are actually crossing the border.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Kudos to Arizona. This law has always been here and it just hasn't been enforced. It has nothing to do with race either. I don't care if you're Mexican, Chinese, Canadian, German, British, Japanese, Russian, whatever...if you're here illegally then you need to go through the proper processes for becoming a citizen or LEAVE. Period. Our government should stop fearing its NON-citizens and enforce this!
I find it strange that the article doesn't discuss the implications for normal U.S citizens, i.e how do you prove you are *not* a H-1B worker? You can't tell a citizen from a non-citizen if neither of them are carrying anything. Obviously no-one who merely arouses the suspicion of police wants to be detained, therefore this constitutes a defacto requirement for every citizen to carry papers.
The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Yeah, let's be more like China.
Or those repressive Canadians either. Or Germany. Or the UK. Or France, or.... I think you get it. The vast majority of countries require visitors to the their country to have documentation with them.
Now, I've never thought "because others do it" is always a good reason for the US to adopt a policy. But in this case, this is just plain common sense.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Do you carry your ID when you take out the garbage? While in a sento? Part of the problem with the Japanese law is that it doesn't make clear reasonable exceptions to this rule. If you are just outside your house without your ID will you be allowed to go back inside to get it?
Also, what if you are a Japanese-citizen with non-typical appearance for Japanese? You'll probably end up having to carry ID to prove your citizenship. Same with the law in Arizona.
Legal immigrants will have papers - Federal immigration rules requires them to carry them anyway.
Illegal immigrants are breaking the law in the first place, and yes this makes them being discovered more likely, but they should be worried already.
Citizens on the other hand are not required to carry proof of citizenship and are not already breaking the law. They are the ones who are going to be impacted most (well if they look mexican...)
All the brown skinned citizens should just not carry anything that identifies them as a citizen. I'm sure lots of lawyers will be willing to help them sue whenever they get arrested for not carrying their birth certificate/passport.
And I live in a pretty laid-back country, too (Finland). Arizona is just trying to enforce the existing law.
For some reason the USA, alone in the world, is not allowed to have borders or exert any control with immigration like everyone else. I've looked very seriously into retiring overseas and, holy shit, some of the hoops you have to jump through even if you have money and skills on the particular country's most wanted list are amazing.
The stupid thing is Arizona has been doing this for three years with no problems. The law just formalized it. The ruckus is made by people who live in little reality distortion bubbles and sit around in ideological echo chambers their entire lives. The law's passage and its farcical coverage by our piss poor, controversy fabricating, yellow news media raised it's profile past the threshold of awareness for the armies of idiots.
Also, this is Slashdot where a small legion of tech geeks likes to pretend they are the rag tag rebels fighting the tyranny and the fascism they imagine infests their lazy, pampered and privileged Western existences.
Sadly this is the level of public discourse in the USA. The allusions to Nazis or Soviet Russia come spewing out of the marching morons like projectile diarrhea at a salmonella festival. I guarantee anyone making such a comparison had not read the (easily accessed online) law. And it's not just babbling rhetoric. Many really, honestly do think Arizona has suddenly transformed into Nazi Germany. That's *really* the image they have in their ossified minds. And even if you prove otherwise, they will become *defiant* and even *proud* in their beliefs.
The USA has become the Bizarro world, a parallel universe where every day it Opposite Day. We no longer have to wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes because we *are* the rabbit hole. We're a nation of Mad Hatters celebrating the un-birthdays while the truth sits in a dusty corner, withering away.
So how are things in Finland? Not sure I'd like the weather, but I'm open to many things to get the hell out of this kingdom of eternal idiots. Seriously, this place is fricking doomed.
This is not a political blog. Please keep these topics (medical, political, etc) off the frontpage. If it's on the frontpage news, we don't need it repeated here.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
The point is that the law essentially doesn't give any major new powers to the police except to enable them check somebody's immigration status when they are dealing with that person anyway. There used to be a common and ridiculous situation where a van full of obvious illegals, no ids, no english, would be stopped and as long as they weren't caught in the act of crossing the border and as long as the driver had a valid license, the cops couldn't do anything. Yes some cops abuse their powers, but they do that anyway. That's a separate battle.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
What troubles me about the law isn't that it requires people suspected of wrongdoing to prove their citizenship, it is that it requires police to determine citizenship status in "any lawful contact".
That means if you witness a crime, but you speak with an accent the cop taking your statement is required to ask you about your citizenship. If you are the victim of a crime and here illegally you cannot report it in Arizona without being deported.
Everyone should stop and think what that means. Do we really want violent crime to be not reported because it's perpetrated on people who aren't here illegally? And good luck finding a witness if you're jumped in a Home Depot parking lot when only day laborers are present.
You know, I hear this argument fairly often, and I still consider it really f*cking stupid. I'm from Canada, but we hear the same B.S. here, so let's get a few things straight:
a) There were no immigrations laws at that time. You can't be illegal if there's no fucking laws to break.
b) Yes, lots of terrible things happened, it doesn't mean that every "white man" shot a dozen indians in order to make claim on the "new world." Some did, but saying that all did is like saying all Germans are Nazis.
c) My ancestors moved here quite sometime after the early colonial days. They weren't trapping beavers and shooting natives, they came as legal immigrants to help do thinks like work mines, build railroads, etc
d) I work born in my home country, again legally, as a citizen.
So how the hell would you classify me as an immigrant? Also, as many people here have stated, it's not immigrants that are the problem (hell, my GF is one), it's illegal immigrants that functions as part of an essentially "underground society" because they aren't supposed to be there. This law unfortunately may have some affect on non-illegals too, which is the part that is stupid and sucks (and needs to be fixed, IMHO), but we don't need to bring the "white man who killed and pillaged" arguments around to deal with that.
Seriously. I have never to my knowledge harmed any indigenous person, but some people expect me to pay and/or feel guilty for it. While indigenous people's may warrant some support for those events that occurred, I myself deserve neither the debt of blame, guilt, nor any other exorbitant costs associated with such.
You carry your birth certificate with you at all times? Or your passport? Those are the only two documents you list that prove citizenship or legal status. Neither a military ID nor a driver's license is considered a proof of status. I carried my military ID around for years, but still had to provide a birth certificate, Social Security Card, or Passport as proof of legal right to work when I got a new job. I was a National Guardsman, so I changed employers several times while still carrying a military ID, and it was never once accepted as proof of citizenship (not surprising, non-citizens can be in the military. We had a Brit in our unit. He eventually got US citizenship, but was a legal resident for the first two or three years of his service. He couldn't get a clearance until his citizenship went through, but not all jobs require them).
That's the problem here. Actually, there's two problems. Requiring someone to show any form of identification without a their being a suspect in a crime or otherwise falling somehow under the jurisdiction if the police is wrong, and generally one of the things we see in over the top satires of authoritarian states ("Youa paapas, plaeze!"). That a US state should make it a matter of course for law enforcement to ask citizens for proof of citizenship lest they face arrest would be comical if it wasn't depressing. The *secondary* problem is that proof of citizenship is actually a pain to carry.
Your Social Security Card says right on it that it should be kept in a safe place, not carried. Your birth certificate is probably a fairly large and cumbersome document to lug around (not to mention that it should also be kept in a safe place), and Americans are not required to possess Passports unless they plan to travel abroad. What do you suggest US citizens of Mexican decent carry to prove their citizenship? Driver's license isn't proof. SSC and birth certificate shouldn't be carried. Passport they may or may not have and are not legally required to have.
Who the law is aimed at is completely immaterial to who it may affect. One could reasonably argue that legal residents have to carry a green card. It's a pain, but one could make a reasonable argument, that it's a burden they bear for living in a country not their own. The fact that there is absolutely no way to externally tell the difference between an illegal Mexican immigrant, a legal Mexican immigrant, and a US citizen of Mexican decent creates a dilemma though. The citizen should not be required to carry proof of citizenship, but without such proof how do you know he's a citizen? If this was a rare and unusual use case, it might not be that bad, but there are hundred's of thousands if not millions of US citizens of Mexican decent in Arizona.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Yes some cops abuse their powers, but they do that anyway. That's a separate battle.
It seems to me that you should end that battle before you give one of the belligerents a shiny new gun to play with.
There used to be a common and ridiculous situation where a van full of obvious illegals, no ids, no english, would be stopped and as long as they weren't caught in the act of crossing the border and as long as the driver had a valid license, the cops couldn't do anything.
"Ridiculous"?! I find this to be a common and sensible situation.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.