Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741

by jadence • 16 years ago

60 38 16 years ago

defen4• 16 years ago

This strikes me as ridiculous fear mongering. The point of the law is "attrition through enforcement" - the idea being that illegal immigrants will leave Arizona if they see that the state is serious about enforcing immigration law. Are we to suppose that people will continue to live in Arizona illegally, given the knowledge that there are now real penalties? The article also uses scare language like "The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before" to make it sound like there's some grand plan to hunt down and lock up every illegal immigrant, so that the prison companies can charge the state for their upkeep. And yet the bill only provides for a maximum of 20 days in jail for a first offender, and 30 days in jail for subsequent offenses.

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

I think you should double check that.

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070p.htm

http://law.justia.com/arizona/codes/2010/title13/13-702.html

http://law.justia.com/arizona/codes/2010/title13/13-703.html

http://law.justia.com/arizona/codes/2010/title13/13-707.html

defen4• 16 years ago

I did, actually. Arizona SB 1070 was superseded by SB 2162: http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/49leg...

credo• 16 years ago

>>The point of the law is "attrition through enforcement"

It is much more than that.

If you're a US citizen and you're not carrying proof of citizenship, you could get thrown in jail for not having your "papers".

Now, I'm sure many citizens feel that their accent or their skin color or some other attribute protects them from sent to jail and that they don't need to carry their papers with them. However, if a cop thinks that you might be a Canadian, they could throw you in jail for not proving otherwise. .

kjhgfkjmhng2• 16 years ago

Presumably only blacks and native americans are safe?

firemanx3• 16 years ago

Do you have a reference for citizens being able to be sent to jail for not carrying papers? I was under the impression that there was nothing in the bill about putting people in jail. I haven't read the link yet, though, so perhaps it has more details.

defen4• 16 years ago

> If you're a US citizen and you're not carrying proof of citizenship, you could get thrown in jail for not having your "papers".

...if you are lawfully stopped, detained, or arrested, you may be held until your immigration status is verified. I don't see why this is a big deal. There is no grand scheme to sweep the countryside and round up everyone with brown skin or a Canadian accent.

butterfi• 16 years ago

"But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

It was there that Pearce's idea took shape.

"I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'"

This isn't just about illegal immigrants, this is about corporations that get legislation passed for their own financial gain. Granted this happens all the time, but this is so blatantly targeted towards people who have little or no defense. The potential for abuse is obvious. We've already had a U.S. judge busted for receiving kick-backs for sending juveniles to a youth facility. The US already has one of the largest prison populations in the world. This is a crime against humanity in the making.

We should be afraid.

JohnnyBrown• 16 years ago

The frightening thing is not this particular application, but the broader concepts of (1) extension of an already draconian police power (2) almost entirely brought about by a private profit motive. Capitalism is an evolutionary process and as such is almost beyond the control of human intentions, so seeing it move against individual liberty is highly alarming.

hnal9434• 16 years ago

Whose liberty is being restricted? Illegal immigrants do not have rights to remain in this country.

julius_geezer• 16 years ago

I guess one question is whether the bulk of the illegal immigrants in Arizona at any one time are using it as a residence or just passing through. This would definitely make it less attractive as a residence, but its advantages for transit are considerable.

The prison business has had some curious effects elsewhere a judge went to jail up around Scranton for abusing his power to send kids to jail for offenses that ordinarily might've rated probation before judgment; he was compensated by the company that ran juvenile prisons up there.

guelo• 16 years ago

Private prisons are an abomination and should not exist.

jacoblyles• 16 years ago

Why?

jackvalentine• 16 years ago

It creates an industry of private businesses that have but one motive: a profit motive.

They are therefor motivated to do everything they can to increase incarceration rates to create demand for their services of imprisonment. This article illustrates that pretty clearly. It also creates situations like the corrupt judge/private prison kickback scheme in Pennsylvania recently.(1)

We don't need profit-driven companies who profit from increased rates of incarceration, they have no reason to really rehabilitate people - they want them back in the system ASAP.

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=2&h...

izendejas2• 16 years ago

If legislators really wanted to reduce illegal immigration they would also go after the demand, implementing tougher penalties against those who hire illegal immigrants^^ or outsource to companies that do. Of course, this will never happen as the walmarts, mcdonalds, big tech corps^, etc will never allow it because surely their costs would go up and so would their prices.

Edit: ^ work at a big tech company? A decent percentage of the janitors and cooks are illegal (and, for the record, are not just Hispanic)

Edit2: ^^Including themselves--because they do.

edit3: (sorry I was on my smartphone before). If the supply of jobs for illegal immigrants goes down, so does their influx. It's true in the US--and it's true in Europe and it's true in Asia: http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1247156221.99/ http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/01/93137/recession-enforc...

But then, of course, in a global economy, cutting the influx of illegal immigrants (and immigration in general) would lead to more jobs shipped north/south/overseas.

So in the end, many of these legislators are really just pandering and contributing to the fear-mongering here and everywhere as people are, in many cases, naturally xenophobic.

scrod• 16 years ago

And in fact, companies that hire illegal immigrants benefit greatly from stricter immigration enforcement; the more pressure from the state that's applied to immigrants, the easier it is for employers to lower their pay, subject them to dangerous and harsh conditions, and occasionally even refuse to compensate them altogether. If they refuse, ICE will deport their families.

izendejas2• 16 years ago

Yes, and we all end up paying the indirect costs of this cheap labor because, as is well-publicized, most of these people won't have health insurance so premiums, medical costs, Medicaid costs, etc go up.

rdtsc• 16 years ago

If we cared about human rights, we should flip the situation on its head and impose heavy (in the 6 or 7 figure range) fines for hiring undocumented workers. If any of the workers are mistreated they should be able to turn in their employer.

That will give the workers an upper hand and would prevent them from being taken advantage of. Now the employer can live in fear of being exposed.

hnal9434• 16 years ago

ICE should deport them and their families. That would be enforcing federal law.

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

What are employers supposed to do to avoid hiring illegals? As far as i'm aware, anything beyond "hey, this looks like a crude forgery brown guy" is a discrimination lawsuit in the making.

I have one idea how to get employers to help - offer them amnesty against both penalties and racial discrimination lawsuits if they turn in their illegal workers. We can even reduce disruption to the business by replacing the illegal workers with (currently) unemployed Americans.

I.e., to replace an illegal, select an American currently receiving unemployment. Tell the American that a job has been found for him and terminate his unemployment benefits. We kill two birds with one stone this way.

xtho• 16 years ago

Interestingly I recently attended a talk by Loic Wacquant[1] about prisons in the US, the US as penal state. This somehow fits.

[1] http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/wacquant/

johngalt• 16 years ago

Unchecked undocumented immigration is a problem. There are a lot of people that want to come here for the right reasons and some that want to come here for the wrong reasons. The goal of any immigration reform should be to parse those two groups. Make it easier to be here legitimately to avoid the ongoing exploitation of the people that are here to work. Then focus enforcement on those that are not here legitimately because they are now not hiding among the crowds of people that just want to feed their families. This is what most people in AZ want, but the only lever they have is enforcement, it's not like Arizona can decide to unilaterally grant amnesty.

The idea of "papers please" is reprehensible, but where is the anger at the federal border patrol checkpoints between AZ and CA? An AZ cop asking for a drivers license during a traffic stop is supposedly "draconian fascist evil", but stopping people for no reason driving between two states is considered ok?

Imagine that after 9/11 the rest of the country said "good luck dealing with that terrorism problem NY. We're going to put checkpoints up to make sure those problems stay in your state and not ours."

hnal9434• 16 years ago

What an absurd hit piece. The Arizona law simply states that the authorities in Arizona will enforce existing federal law.

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

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