racial profiling

It looks like Arizona’s draconian racial profiling law was only the beginning. Republicans in the State Senate Appropriations Committee just approved a flagrantly unconstitutional bill that would eliminate citizenship by birthright, a right protected by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

As recently as 1982 in Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented immigrants are protected by the 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship. The debate over the citizenship bill may even show signs of splintering inside the Republican Party, with one leading anti-immigrant State Senator accusing the state’s Chamber of Commerce of supporting “‘open borders’ because you like cheap labor.”

In addition to the legislation that would directly challenge the 14th Amendment, the committee also passed a bill that would force public schools to report to law enforcement officials on children’s parents if they’re undocumented, make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to drive in the state, and ban undocumented immigrants from attending state colleges and universities.

“If we’re going to stop this invasion - and it is an invasion – you’re going to have to stop rewarding people for breaking those laws,” said State Senate President Russell Pearce, a champion of the two bills and the architect of SB 1070.

Now, the bills move to the full State Senate.

“Every state needs a least one sheriff like Joe Arpaio,” Sharron Angle told a convention of right-wing bloggers in Las Vegas. And now “Sheriff Joe” of Maricopa County, Arizona, intends to push his hardcore anti-immigrant agenda and promote SB 1070 around the country. After his stint on reality TV with Fox’s “Smile…You’re Under Arrest!” Sheriff Joe is looking to eclipse Tom Tancredo in anti-immigrant politics and demagoguery.

Sheriff Joe will soon address a New Hampshire Republican Party conference and is also slated to speak at the “National Tea Party Unity Convention” in Las Vegas this October. At the Tea Party Convention he will join other right-wing extremists such as Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, radio talk show host Neal Boortz, and a whole slew of Tea Party fanatics like William Temple, Victoria Jackson and the rapper “Polatik.”

Increasing his political reach, the Los Angeles Times reports that he is “supporting candidates for Michigan governor, California Assembly and congressional seats in Florida and Missouri, among others.” He recently gave his blessing to Tea Party darling Sharron Angle, who will join Sheriff Joe at the Tea Party Convention, although he later admitted: “I don't know too much about her.”

Famous for building “tent cities” for inmates, racial profiling, sweeps and raids of immigrant communities, and glaring civil rights abuses, Sheriff Joe is now an important endorsement for right-wing candidates outside of Arizona. Politics is not unfamiliar to Sheriff Joe, who launched investigations against critical journalists and political opponents, and was blasted for using the law as “a personal tool to target political enemies or avenge perceived wrongs.”

The New York Times in 2009 detailed the Republican Party’s new anti-immigrant hero and his failed record as Sheriff:

Maricopa County has many times more federal prison condition lawsuits than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined. In September of last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care revoked its accreditation of the jails Sheriff Arpaio runs on the grounds of failure to provide adequate health care for inmates.

In October, a federal judge ruled that Sheriff Arpaio’s department had violated the Constitution by depriving inmates of medical care, fed them unhealthy food and housed them in unsanitary conditions.

The Goldwater report suggested that the picture beyond corrections was equally grim, citing the department’s tendency to “clear” cases without any resolution or arrest, and suggested that resources were being diverted to efforts to find illegal immigrants through sweeps that other departments characterized as dangerous.

As a result of the raids, Phoenix’s mayor, Phil Gordon, wrote a letter to the United States Department of Justice accusing Mr. Arpaio of “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

…

The Goldwater report suggests that the trade-off for the letting [sic] the sheriff do his thing may not benefit his constituents. Although his department was “adept at self-promotion and is an unquestionably ‘tough’ law-enforcement agency, under its watch violent crime rates recently have soared, both in absolute terms and relative to other jurisdictions.”

Homicides in the county were up 167 percent in the three-year period ending in 2007 and the report stated that the budget for the department, excluding corrections, had doubled since 2001.

“We have 40,000 unserved felony warrants — murderers and rapists — and instead of serving those warrants, we have this buffoon who spends his time popping out from behind curtains for a reality television show,” said Michael C. Manning, a Phoenix lawyer who has sued the department on behalf of clients repeatedly and successfully in wrongful death suits. “He continues to demean our community by chasing publicity and acting the buffoon.”

This call for healthcare reform to provide coverage to those who may be in the country illegally is quite interesting:

America's largest Hispanic Christian Organization, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), The Hispanic National Association of Evangelicals, expressed disappointment and warned of continued polarization as a result of the recent incorporation of anti-immigrant rhetoric within the current Health Care debate.

"The Hispanic National Association of Evangelicals believes our nation needs Health Care Reform that reconciles affordability and accessibility with the protection of life, conscience, personal and religious liberties. We encourage all members of Congress to debate this issue with integrity, humility, and respect. Health Care reform is a matter of Social Justice driven by a moral imperative that is undeniable. The fact that millions of Americans lack health care coverage is unacceptable", declared Dr. Gilbert Velez, NHCLC Chairman and President of the Hispanic Mega Church Association.

Hispanic Evangelicals are reacting to rhetoric recently incorporated by both parties declaring that a proof of citizenship requirement will be included in Heath Care Reform proposals prohibiting undocumented families access to coverage.

"Correspondingly, we find it to be both morally and politically disadvantageous not to include coverage for all those currently residing in our nation. To require immigrants to prove citizenship in order to purchase Health Care coverage stands as a defacto endorsement of racial profiling and continues to exacerbate the anti-immigrant sentiment currently embedded within the immigration reform debate", explained Rev. Nick Garza, Conference Chief Operating Officer.

"To exclude the opportunity for working families to purchase coverage will place over 12 million homes in a precarious situation. This is deportation via attrition or better yet, some may label the scheme as Xenophobic Health Care Reform. We call upon all the White House, Congress and faith advocates to respectfully address this matter from the platform of Leviticus 19 as we are admonished to treat the strangers among us as one of our own", added Garza.

The reason it is so interesting is that the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference also happens to be a member of the new right-wing supergroup The Freedom Federation, which has recently begun speaking out on the issue of healthcare reform.

To date, the Federation has not publicly taken a position on the issue of coverage for illegal immigrants, but given that this idea is a fundamental non-starter for most conservative and right-wing groups, it'll be interesting to see how the coalition tries to finesse this issue ... especially considering that the Eagle Forum is likewise a member:

Eagle Forum, a conservative public policy organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, encourages town hall meeting attendees to be more vocal about the deliberately-placed loopholes in both the House and Senate health care bills which will allow illegal immigrants to apply for and receive health insurance coverage. ... Eagle Forum continues to encourage American citizens to attend their district and state town hall meetings and to urge their elected officials to oppose any attempts at a stealth health care amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Prince William County, Virginia did something this week to address social and financial problems stemming from its recent crackdown on immigrants. What exactly it did is not entirely clear:

Washington Post headline: “Pr. William Softens Policy on Immigration Status Checks.”

Washington Times headline: “Prince William stiffens crackdown on illegals.”

Washington Examiner headline: “Pr. William softens illegal immigration policy.”

NBC 4 played it safe with “Prince William Votes To Change Immigration Enforcement.”

So what happened? As the Post and the Examiner report, the board of supervisors in this wealthy D.C. suburb, where police have been checking the immigration status of crime suspects, changed the policy slightly. Now the police only check the status of those arrested. (A proposal to check only those arrested and put in jail failed by a wide margin.)

While the Washington Times immigration coverage is always suspect, and the paper’s editorial page has been pushing the county to stay the course, in this case they do point to another change in policy: whereas before, local police needed “probable cause” that the person was undocumented (wonder what that means?), they now check everybody. Broadening the law, claimed the supervisors, would help protect them from lawsuits for racial profiling. But as Chairman Corey Stewart, leader of the crackdown, asserted, “This will increase the number of people who will have their immigration status checked.”

In any event, it’s hardly the “reconsideration” of the crackdown we were teased with in April.