pinion: A few final thoughts
Posted on 28 July 2010 by oscar
From: The South Chicagoan
We’re at the day before the day that local police across Arizona and landlords and employers in a suburban Omaha town will be required to implement their own idea of who they think belongs in this country.
Thursday is the day that the Arizona Legislature’s law giving police greater authority to question people about their immigration status is set to take effect. It also is the day that Fremont, Neb., can start enforcing a law that was approved by voter referendum despite local officials’ attempts to block it.
THAT LAW IS the one that penalizes landlords for renting apartments or other housing to non-citizens without a valid visa, and also calls for local penalties for companies that wind up employing people in that same category.
There is one catch to both of these. They are the subject of lawsuits challenging the validity of the new laws. Those lawsuits will take years to resolve. Yet attorneys who oppose both measures have asked for injunctions that would prevent them from being enforced.
Which means it is possible that by the time you read this commentary, a judge may have ordered the the law’s implementation delayed. In the case of Fremont, Neb., local officials are considering suspending the new law – all so that people aren’t hurt by its ill effects while the court fight over the larger issues is pending.
Anybody who has read this weblog in recent months knows very well that I view Arizona’s action as a blatant political move meant to shore up support for the local Republican establishment among those voters with a nativist ideological bent. I remain convinced that, long-term, it was a drastic mistake because it boxes them into a stance on immigration that is so counter to the direction our society is taking in the 21st Century.
OF COURSE, THE people who most support these kinds of measures are the ones with their own hangups about our society, and who seem to think the power of government ought to be used to preserve their own vision of a nation that was not quite so inclusive (a significant understatement, to be honest).
There are the various polls that show majorities of people somehow favoring what is happening in Arizona and in Fremont, Neb., although I’d argue that is just the nativist element doing a good job of trying to shout down those people who would prefer to look at the immigration issue with a calm, rational perspective.
I noticed the Gallup Organization on Tuesday came out with a new poll – one that says a plurality still favors immigration laws that that decrease the numbers of new people coming to the United States. But officials compared the latest results to a poll they did last year on the same question – and found that the number of people who want immigration decreased has itself decreased (from 50 percent last year to 45 percent this month).
For the record, 17 percent want increases in immigration (which I’m sure the nativists will spin by saying it is so much less than 45 percent). But another 34 percent, according to the Gallup poll, want to maintain the present level.
WHICH MEANS THAT a slight majority aren’t in line with the idea that we need to step up the deportation process to “save” our society. The number is shrinking.
I’d like to think the reality of these new laws and how paranoid they make us look as a society is starting to sink into the public consciousness. Could it be that now that we’re only a day away from these new laws actually taking effect, people are realizing how ridiculous they are?
That probably is an oversimplification of what is really going through the public’s mindset – although not nearly as simplistic as the notion I keep hearing that “illegal Mexicans” are somehow behind all the drug and streetgang problems we have in this country, and that getting rid of “those people” will resolve all our problems.
I heard that latest bit of rhetoric Tuesday from somebody who lives in Arizona who got his few seconds of attention being interviewed by CNN. (If it had been Fox News Channel, that statement would have come from one of the featured commentators).
IT IS THE level of dialogue that this issue has sunk to.
It also is the reason that my thoughts on this “day before” are focused on whether or not judges in Phoenix and Omaha are pondering whether the potential for damage from these new laws is so great that they should be halted before they ever take effect.
From an activist’s standpoint, it would be better to leave them in place and let them take effect. Having a real live person whose life gets wrongly ruined would bolster the long-term chances of success in winning the actual lawsuit years from now.
But we’re supposed to be about protecting people, whenever possible. That is what gives our society the moral high ground we like to claim for ourselves, and which is chipped away at by these very new laws.
Po
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