The Arizona law makes police investigation of immigration status SECONDARY to normal police activity.It does not empower police to conduct random sweeps of "brown people" or anyone else by acting as primary immigration law enforcement agents.
However,the professional race pimps(of whom we have a surfeit in RI),the irresponsible media,and a president who all too often runs off at the mouth before engaging his brain,have distorted this situation and their motives are anything but benign.Their motive is to push amnesty.It's that simple.
I am sure the leftists here will rant .Big deal.Who cares.

Joe, or others, when was the previous amnesty? The one that was said to be "the last" amnesty given? I'd love to print that out and have that info for my friends who think that amnesty, just this one time, is a good idea. I tried googling but came up with too much McCain/Kennedy crap.

Thanks.

>>>If we penalize people for hiring from among the illegal population

BINGO......and, pray tell, are all the large businesses which hire these folks Democrats?
I thought the GOP was the party of business....must have made a mistake there.....

I support profiling 100% at the place of employment. But it appears that is not something the conservatives or republicans or the dems have the will to do. But let's wait and watch. Obama has now dealt with some of the major priorities and will be taking up immigration soon.

As to Arizona, they have a 100% right to do anything which does not stomp on Federal law. But, then again, people can boycott them and not visit there....and groups can sue them for doing so.

That is the back and forth of our society and politics.

Patrick - I think you are looking for the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

I'm glad Mr. Harrop spat his ignorance of the matter.

He is no longer a viable choice for mayor of Providence in my eyes.

Providence is overload with illegals and I'm tired of paying for their comfort.

Posted by JTR at April 29, 2010 2:35 PM

Patrick - I think you are looking for the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Before that there was the "Chinese Confession" cases in the 50's. That amounted to an amnesty. I believe it also included Koreans and Filipinos.

That and the one you mentioned are two major ones, I believe there was a third.

Of course, we have had a de facto amnesty running for about 15 years now.

Stuart writes:

"BINGO......and, pray tell, are all the large businesses which hire these folks Democrats? "

Big business is more often the final beneficiary. Most of the illegals arehired by relatively small operations in agriculture and meat processing.

For instance in my part of North Carolina there are a lot of Hispanic agricultural workers. the farms are mostly small, although the product ends up with American Tobacco, and a few others. Some would say that picking gold leaf is the kind of work Americans won't do. That causes me to wonder, the "unemployment rate" in inner cities is 60-70%. If they are unemployed, how do they live? Why aren't we running buses from NYC to North Carolina? Probably because U.S. citizens no longer have to work. Just as we began "outsourcing" our manufacturing to China, we are now "outsourcing" our labor from Mexico. What happens when their kids become educated? Where do we "outsource" labor from then? We had best expect that our food costs will go up.

Right you are, Faust....

Big business is usually smart enough to hide their crimes behind a couple of shell companies - so that an illegal can, for instance, clean wal-marts in the evening, but when we find out about it they cry "subcontractors did it - we know nothing".

Remember recently that Gov. Romney of Ma had illegals doing his grounds.......same deal - blame it on the sub-contractors...I know nothing.

Anyway, the point is that folks cannot blame this on the left. The GOP had almost total control of the government for 12 or more years of the last 15, and did very little to tackle it.

The same GOP talking heads will jump up and down then Obama attempts to come to a moderate solution.

The Creation of Record legislation made everyone here prior to 1948 a resident alien as of that date-that's the other amnesty.
The 1986 law was the Simpson-Mazzoli Act.I explained as a guest on the Helen Glover show yesterday what went wrong there.
The basic fallacy of amnesty is that once people receive it,they will no longer tolerate substandard wages and conditions and employers will just hire a new wave of illegal aliens.
the amnesty advocates are never willing to strengthen enforcement or implement VERIFICATION for employees as to legal status.
Amnesty advocates are also mostly open borders adocates,and that is a line we can't cross,ever.One worlders go drop dead.Seriously.If one doesn't believe in the survival of the USA as a sovereign nation they need to get the f**k out now.We just can't absorb 20 million new residents in this economy,which isn't going to get much better job wise.

Stuart-you raised a very interesting point re:"stomping"on Federal law.I'd say if any entity is doing that it's the cities that have declared they are "sanctuaries"where Federal immigration law doesn't apply.Have you a rejoinder for that?

Roland-it's FROMA Harrop.She's a lefty columnist for the Projo.Is she even related to Dan harrop?

Stuart,

Once again, you leap from peak to peak and ignore the valleys.

"Remember recently that Gov. Romney of Ma had illegals doing his grounds.......same deal - blame it on the sub-contractors...I know nothing."

This is a glossing and ignores what is really going on in America. Just a generals prepare to fight the last war, people who acquire wealth seek to live like the rich people of their youth. That includes large,landscaped lawns. Without illegals. working at sub minimum wage, the landscaping industry would disappear as unaffordable to the customers. People with large lawns would buy sheep or simply accept "ground cover". When I drive down Blackstone and observe the landscaping, I wonder how many illegal families ate off of that. I also wonder why there are so many "unemployed" kids in Providence.

"Anyway, the point is that folks cannot blame this on the left. The GOP had almost total control of the government for 12 or more years of the last 15, and did very little to tackle it."

Stuart, face up to reality. Neither party repesents salvation. The enemy is government, not a particular party. Read today's Drudge Report. The average government bureaucrat makes $119,000, his private industry equivalent makes $59,000. That was not the action of a particular party.

Your listing of private industry tragedies skips over context and implies government would do it better.

Without doubt the loss of the W.Va miners is a tragedy, but how many miners went home that day and had dinner with the family they were able to support with their mining job. There has to be a context.

As to government regulation, look at New Orleans. There is a tragedy caused by government. The levies that might have prevented it were turned into government bachanalias. Each levy (7) had its own "commission". Each commission had a highly paid commissioner, who had authority to hire his friends. Despite repeated warnings, the levies were ignored. But, everyone involved made a lot of money.

Warrington, your address to Stuart misses the essential point: he doesn't believe that government is the problem, but the solution. Even if he doesn't honestly believe that, it is the position that he believes benefits him most. Because he fancies himself a political insider who will benefit from the growth of government power, like the nomenklatura of the Soviet era. Little does he know that he will be cast aside by the real thugs who control his party, despite his snide remarks, because he can neither lead nor coerce anyone, and in a command/control society that is all the counts.

When Fro complains about people dress (as she has in several of her columns), she just comes across as a snob. She doesn't seem like somebody I'd want on my team, since I'm not really into wearing a tie to go to the grocery store.

BobN wrote:
"Warrington, your address to Stuart misses the essential point: ..."

Umm, no. He does miss the point, but the point is "Don't feed the trolls."

As it's gotten harder to cross the border, those crossing it are coming to stay, and bringing their families with them. When back-and-forth was easy, workers would come when jobs were plenty and go back when it got tougher, because it was easy to come back again.
So the wall's been a huge waste of money and it's had the opposite effect. Not only building it is wasteful, but all the resources in finding, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants. Now Arizona is taking their police off police-work to deal with this. Crazy.

With Mexicans now having fewer children (2 per family now compared to 6 thirty years ago), soon into future they will have no need to come.

So again, the wall is a big waste of money. Have I said that the Right wing in this country is crazy?

Arturo-you're back?
Anyhow-the wall is effective in areas where there is a high traffic of illegals in an urban/urban setting such as El Paso/Juarez,Laredo/Nuevo Laredo etc because crossers can disappear quickly.
Not so much in rural,open areas.
You're exactly right about the sea change in migration relating to Mexicans(OTM's were always coming to stay)-the old ebb and flow of largely agricultural workers has been replaced by permanent migration of family units with the attitude of"acqui estamos y no nos vamos".
Arizona is not trying to turn police into immigration officers.
They are trying to prevent local authorities such as misguided mayors and police chiefs like Dean Esserman from providing cover and concealment for illegal aiens encountered by police in the normal course of their business.
Read what the bill actually says and I think you'll agree.

Yo, Patrick. In recent history, there have been two mass amnesties (in addition to five smaller, specific amnesties):

One in 1965

One in 1986

Each was passed with vows to never repeat and to clamp down on the border. Your friends can judge for themselves how well those promises were carried out.

What a mistake. Making promises that is. This time around, there should be an amnesty without the promises.

No Arturo-no amnesty,period.The betetr course is to make it uncomfortable enough for illegal aliens from wherever that live here that they decide to leave.
Opportunities are no longer growing in this country and our immigration pollicies need to reflect that.we should decide who we want here.There are many people around the world who can enhance this country.We don't need those who cannot.

So let's break this down.

"Stopping brown people in the street is not the way to address the problem."

No one is proposing this, not even Arizona. (P.S. I object to the use of that expression to reference Latinos, no matter the context.)

"The great majority of illegal immigrants come for work."

Thank you for confirming that the most effective approach to resolving illegal immigration is implementation of e-verify and a return to employer enforcement.

"Though they shouldn't be here, these are mostly good people supporting their families."

No argument here. The complication is that this is sometimes used as justification for the breaking of immigration law.

"These poor folk deserve to be treated humanely."

How are you defining "humanely"? Does "humane" treatment, for example, preclude the enforcement of our immigration laws? How about employer enforcement? Does "humane" treatment axiomatically call for a third mass amnesty?

Looking at the turnout for the "great immigrant rally"at the Statehouse on Channel 6,it looked lke less than the 10th amendment rally,let alone the Tea Party turnout.So much for the local radical blowhards' predictions.