Arizona Immigration Law - SB 1070 Hearing Today

The State of Arizona is under siege and in the spotlight today.  Protesters for or against the Immigration Law due to take effect on July 29 will be voicing their opinions in front of the State Capitol. 

Activist groups are staking out space as I type.  The last time this happened, voices were raised, shouts were heard and fists pounded the air.  Yet, even with tempers flaring, it was relatively peaceable.  As a protester of the 60's and a veteran of sit-in demonstrations I back both sides in their right to gather and have their opinions heard.  But as an Arizonan, my feet are firmly planted beside Jan Brewer, our Arizona Governor.

Governor Jan Brewer

The Federal government will argue it's case against Arizona's right to enact laws, a State's Rights case.  Arizona will stand firm in it's right to protect itself in the absence of Washington's ability to do it's job by enforcing immigration laws on the books and the failure to pass immigration reform.

Arizona can show that expenditures for education, criminal justice and emergency medical care are significant and paid almost entirely by border States. 

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) maintains that the problem with the immigration system isn't the immigrants, it is that immigration quotas provide so few opportunities for most immigrants to enter to country legally.  There are only 5000 visas available for unskilled foreigners seeking work.

Which leads to the notion that the illegal immigrants whose first act in the United States was to break it's laws, have some inherent right to amnesty.  This is nonsensical.

John McCain, our Senator, estimated that 4,000,000 illegal immigrants entered the country across the Arizona border just in 2004.  It is estimated that 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States today.  That means one in every seventeen people are here illegally.  If this isn't the Government's primary focus, we are ruined as a nation.

How is it that billion dollar corporations through the lack of timely FDA oversight perpetrate health risks resulting in deaths?  Why is this increasing despite all the red flags regarding food and medical drug health issues in the U.S?  Let one whiff of Mad Cow Disease threaten the multi billion dollar U.S. meat industry and they will tell you they have tracked the problem to a specific animal's gene line and can even tell you which herd any animal remotely related to it is now living.  Yet, they can't find almost 20,000,000 illegal immigrants? 

Are you getting this? 

Why do illegal immigrants have any rights?  As opposed to legal immigrants who are welcomed and respected as citizens of the U.S.  This used to be the crowning glory of the Republic, the embracing of many beliefs and many cultures resulting in a heady brew of language, ability and ambition - all working together.

What right does the elected official of a foreign country have to tell me what is appropriate in my county?

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon calls Arizona Law SB1070 "racial discrimination" a "violation of human rights".  I suppose it's easier to rule a country when you, by inference, encourage the lesser skilled of your people to leave.  Then you won't be so pushed to provide social services for your own countrymen.  Their human rights don't seem to mean much in Mexico. 

Mexico's immigration laws are strict.  The General Law on Population enacted by Mexico in 2000 mandates federal, state and municipal police cooperate with immigration authorities in the arrest of illegal immigrants.  Illegal immigration is a felony punishable by a fine of $2,000.00 and two years in jail.  Reentry will cost you ten years in prison.  Visa violators will get six years in prison.  Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are viewed as criminals.  

President Felipe Calderon is a hypocrite of the highest order.

So, if the U.S. laws on immigration are not upheld here, 

they will have to be enforced here.

It's Sheriff Joe's deputies who are on the line and he is a very protective boss.  Especially when his men are out in the desert looking for illegals.  Because the fence won't stop everyone - even if it's completed.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) have only so many officers, spread over too much territory.  U.S. citizens have been killed close to the border, on their own property.  Families sleep in shifts to protect their homes, their families and their livestock.  Automobiles routinely disappear.  Arizonans on the border live in a dangerous war zone, insufficiently protected and marginalized by their own country, while politicians line up for camera time spouting the latest "sounds good" sound byte.  Talk is so damn cheap.  Action is the only thing that means anything at all and in Washington, the government failed to enact immigration reform or improve border security.

A drug was is raging just across the border in Mexico.  The violence around drug activities is accelerating.  There are those who believe that if the need wasn't there, the drugs wouldn't appear and the violence would subside. 

This is a simplistic, visionary and total unrealistic assessment of a very real situation. People are dying now on both sides of the border.

Think about this.  Do you honestly believe illegal Mexican immigrants, the drug runners and the human trafikkers are the only people capable of crossing our borders?

THINK AGAIN.