my question: what are the chances this draconian law is struck down by the courts as unconstitutional?
With the Roberts' court, it's hard to say. Not as much of a slam dunk as we might have seen in previous courts. That said, I think the Justice Dept. probably has a better case to make since I really don't understand how this decision does NOT lead to racial profiling.
Speaking of which, this is one of the best quotes about teabaggers I've seen:
"If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you'd only see one circle."
I have a different and much harder test of the imagination. Imagine Tim Wise is not a grotesquely fat pile of shit who secretes lies from every orifice and pore of his huge and disgusting body. It is impossible. I tried my damnedest to imagine that his blog post was something worthwhile and yet the idiocy of it kept penetrating my conscious. Examples
- the events he describes at the very beginning of his verbal turd were not tea parties. They were gun rights rallies. As is typical of these terrifying, fringe, crazy, racist, naziesque, rage filled events there was not a single reported incidence of violence.
- There has been, in fact, at least one black person who showed up at a tea party armed and Wise will be heartened to know this was cited by some in the media as a reason to fear the tea party phenomenon. Unfortunately this was not in the way Wise imagines. Click the following link for video of MSNBC doctoring video to hide the race of the armed man in order to insinuate that the tea party is a jamboree for violent white racists
- What has Pat Buchanan employing a racist got to do with the tea parties? By the way, our sitting black president for decades was a member of, and huge donor to, an overtly bigoted organisation known as the trinity church. Given this its hard to see why a black racist getting hired by an organisation unrelated to his imagined black political movement would be seized upon as evidence to delegitimatize and smear that black movement the way Wise does of the tea parties.
- WTF has a poor taste joke Ann Coulter made years ago(misquoted by Wise as is to be expected) got to do with the tea party movement?
- His whole post is premised on the idea that the tea parties have received better media treatment than other protest movements. He believes this to be evidence of white privilege. This is not just wrong but is in fact opposite to the truth.
Its has been treated far worse by most media outlets and it is precisely it's 'whiteness' that has served as a main target of attack by the New York Times, ABC, CNN, MSNBC ect. ect. When have you ever before seen inferences made about a protest movement purely based on its racial composition? Wise knows full well that a predominantly Black or Asian protest would never have its validity or motives challenged by any one of those media outlets simply because of its being predominantly black or asian.
my question: what are the chances this draconian law is struck down by the courts as unconstitutional?
With the Roberts' court, it's hard to say. Not as much of a slam dunk as we might have seen in previous courts. That said, I think the Justice Dept. probably has a better case to make since I really don't understand how this decision does NOT lead to racial profiling.
Certainly no expert, but there are a bunch of compelling arguments which will likely lead to the AZ law being struck down: Preemption (the notion that immigration law is strictly within the purview of the Federal govt and therefore cannot be obstructed by a state immigration regulatory scheme), equal protection (state alienage laws are subject to higher judicial scrutiny than federal laws), and perhaps Fourth Amendment search and seizure violation (whether AZ cops can lawfully ask for your papers under this "reasonable suspicion" standard).
Businesses that support stronger immigration enforcement: Fox News Coyotes Some skilled Union labor
All I can think of now.
Businesses that support weaker enforcement or liberalization: Higher Ed High Tech Health industry Agriculture construction
The only thing remotely populist about the tea party is their opposition to the bail of wall street banks and AIG.
Some business might give them some support believing that it will lead to more republican office holders which would lead to lower taxes and less regulations. For most businesses it is more efficient to support the party or specific candidates.
Republicans are likely to do better next fall, but the Tea Party will not be a significant driving force behind the improvement.
They are likely to fuel the increase of nuts flying planes into buildings and other such behavior.
Arizona's Draconian Immigration Law Is Great ... For Our Prison-Industrial Complex By Joshua Holland, AlterNet Posted on April 28, 2010, Printed on April 28, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/146640/
Editor's note: This is satire.
All these liberals whining about ?racial profiling? are missing the larger point.?We?re in a recession here. Unemployment?s been hovering at ten percent. Perhaps the economy's turned a corner, but the American labor market hasn't.
Yet nobody?s really talking about how Arizona?s new immigration law is going to bring big business to the Copper State.
In 2006, when DHS only had 1.5 million people going through immigration proceedings, the?Washington Post reported that ICE held "more detainees a night than Clarion Hotels have guests, operates nearly as many vehicles as Greyhound has buses and flies more people each day than do many small U.S. airlines."
Someone?s got to guard those detainees, clean those buses and fly those planes -- we?re talking about American jobs!
In addition to its own detention facilities -- they're not called "jails" because many of those held are never charged with a crime -- ICE leases thousands of beds in 312 county and city prisons.
And we're not talking about just some European-style?government-run?prison scheme -- these include dozens of private, for-profit facilities. The immigration detention system is crucially important for major companies like Halliburton, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. So we're talking about?private sector?jobs. And they're impossible to ship overseas!
"Housing federal detainees typically brings in more per 'man-day,'" an industry term for what is earned per detainee, "than they can get from state prison systems," wrote Leslie Berestein in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
This is one of the last remaining growth industries, and all thanks to some heavy government intervention -- stimulus of a different kind. Michele Deitch, an expert on prison privatization at the University of Texas in Austin, told the Union-Tribune that "the private prison industry was on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s, until the feds bailed them out with the immigration-detention contracts."
CCA, one of the largest, has had a spectacular resurgence based in large part on changes in immigration policy. In a conference call with investors in 2008, John Ferguson, CEO of the firm, said he was optimistic that DHS's detention network would continue to expand. "We see that the budget supports the detention population of 33,000 inmate detainee beds," Ferguson said. "What I am most encouraged about is everything we are hearing says 33,000 is still not enough."
According to "The Business of Detention," by Stokely Baksh and Renee Feltz, five of CCA's "lucrative contracts to detain immigrants have no end date. Several of its other contracts contain 'take or pay' clauses that guarantee a certain amount of revenue regardless of occupancy rates, as well as periodic rate increases. All of the contracts are renewed at a rate of almost 95 percent."
The major players in the growing immigrant detention business are generous donors to the campaigns of immigration hardliners on Capitol Hill. They need to be: According to Detention Watch, releasing immigrants while their cases are pending costs as little as $12 dollars per day, and 93 percent of them show up for court. Each of the tens of thousands of detainees held in ICE's nationwide prison network costs taxpayers an estimated $95 per day, or about eight times as much. Stimulating!
These private prison companies, which were languishing just a few years ago, are now poised to build on their recent success in Arizona, a sunny new immigration police state!
Now, perhaps you?ve spotted a flaw in this ?Papers, Please? Stimulus Plan: the new law all but guarantees that migrant communities will no longer cooperate with Arizona law enforcement agencies or report serious crimes when they occur. So maybe you're wondering about all the criminals who?won?t?be caught because of the measure? Wouldn?t they have required housing, guards, transportation and the like if they'd been arrested?
Well, yes, but remember: there are far, far more people guilty of what were misdemeanor immigration offenses until last week than there are robbers, rapists and murderers!
Plus, there?s an entirely different pool of potential ? customers. People?mistakenly?identified as ?illegals?! Sure, most of those detained by ICE are unauthorized immigrants, but permanent residents,?students,?tourists, and?people seeking asylum from torture and persecution?also get swept up in the maw of Homeland Security in not-insignificant numbers.
While rare, American citizens -- mostly, but not exclusively those with Hispanic names -- get caught in the system as well. McClatchy Newspapers' Marisa Taylor told the tale of Thomas Warziniack, an addict from Minnesota who was shipped off to an Arizona detention facility a year after a Colorado Judge had confirmed that he was in fact a U.S. citizen. "The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens," wrote Taylor.
The system may be bad for Warziniack, but it's good for the Corrections Corporation of America, and that?s the same as saying it's ?good for America!?
Taylor also noted that once in the system, detainees tend to be loyal customers. "Proving citizenship is especially difficult for the poor, mentally ill, disabled or anyone who has trouble getting a copy of his or her birth certificate while behind bars," she wrote.
Many of those who police will ?reasonably suspect? of being here illegally will be poorer workers, who will have limited access to legal help. There are no guarantees of representation in immigration proceedings; there is no public defender available for low-income detainees. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, 3 out of 4 are left to navigate the system on their own.
Now, all of that is just on the detention side. But this new law also empowers any yahoo Tea Party-type with a sense of grievance -- and are there any who don't harbor such sentiments? -- to sue local officials whom they believe aren't enforcing immigration laws with sufficient zeal.
This is going to unleash a litigation bonanza that reduces unemployment among attorneys, judges, clerks, legal aides, and municipal officials to zero very quickly. In fact, they'll probably have to train people who lost jobs in other sectors of the economy just to keep up with the growing demand!
As 4 out of 5 children working in Burmese sweatshops will tell you: jobs can be more important than abstract ideas like "human rights." So just keep in mind that it's a nuanced issue.
*****
PS: Whether or not it succeeded, please note that this was intended as satire. So, for the record (and in order to avoid some very dull arguments in the comments), I do not support Arizona's new immigration law. And I am not seriously advocating expanded detention in private prisons as a means of stimulating the economy. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
I plundered?this old article?for all the quotes and data in the post above. You can find links to everything there in?the original piece.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
The following is not satire, but an actual headline run on MSNBC.
"Arizona Law Makes it a Crime to be Illegal Immigrant"
as much as i hate msnbc that headline is absolutely accurate. the words "illegal" and "criminal" do not mean the same thing.
a very quick check shows that immigration matters are dealt with mainly by the federal 1990 Immigration Act (IMMACT). doing something in contravention of this statue would technically be termed "illegal". the enforcement of that federal act is charged to the INS. this new arizona law puts illegal immigration now in the criminal law box as well, which is enforced by police officers and whose purpose is to dole out stigmatic punishment.
those who are caught by the INS who have overstayed or otherwise breached their visitor visas typically get deportation orders. i think if certain conditions are present (such as the likelihood of the person not showing up or complying with the order) they can be temporarily detained until such time as the order can be carried out.
that's not the same thing has a criminal conviction and being sent to an actual prison for how long is it? is the max. something like 5 years?
Our very own sheriff Clarence Dupnik (Pima County) has stated that he feels the law "is unwise, stupid, racist and morally wrong."
Arizona's Attorney General has said, in more tempered language, the same thing. From the top Arizona law enforcement officer, on down to sheriffs and police chiefs and officers there is agreement that this law does nothing to stem the problem of Mexican drug gangs crossing the boarder, or illegal immigration.
Arizona Legislature Passes Bill Banning Ethnic Studies Programs
FOXNews.com
After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature sent Gov. Jan Brewer a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.
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After making national headlines for a new law on illegal immigrants, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would ban ethnic studies programs in the state that critics say currently advocate separatism and racial preferences.
The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
The bill stipulates that courses can continue to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law and does not prohibit English as a second language classes. It also does not prohibit the teaching of the Holocaust or other cases of genocide.
Schools that fail to abide by the law would have state funds withheld.
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne called passage in the state House a victory for the principle that education should unite, not divide students of differing backgrounds.
"Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds," Horne said. "This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism."
Horne began fighting in 2007 against the Tucson Unified School District's program, which he said defied Martin Luther King's call to judge a person by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Horne claimed the ethnic studies program encourages "ethnic chauvanism," promotes Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States and tries to intimidate conservative teachers in the school system.
But opponents said the bill would prevent teachers from using an academically proven method of educating students about history. They also argued that the Legislature should not be involved in developing school curriculum.
Comments
I'm no constitutional scholar, though...
With the Roberts' court, it's hard to say. Not as much of a slam dunk as we might have seen in previous courts. That said, I think the Justice Dept. probably has a better case to make since I really don't understand how this decision does NOT lead to racial profiling.
Speaking of which, this is one of the best quotes about teabaggers I've seen:
"If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the issues Tea Party members care about, and the issues Tea Party members are confused about, you'd only see one circle."
I have a different and much harder test of the imagination. Imagine Tim Wise is not a grotesquely fat pile of shit who secretes lies from every orifice and pore of his huge and disgusting body. It is impossible. I tried my damnedest to imagine that his blog post was something worthwhile and yet the idiocy of it kept penetrating my conscious. Examples
- the events he describes at the very beginning of his verbal turd were not tea parties. They were gun rights rallies. As is typical of these terrifying, fringe, crazy, racist, naziesque, rage filled events there was not a single reported incidence of violence.
- There has been, in fact, at least one black person who showed up at a tea party armed and Wise will be heartened to know this was cited by some in the media as a reason to fear the tea party phenomenon. Unfortunately this was not in the way Wise imagines. Click the following link for video of MSNBC doctoring video to hide the race of the armed man in order to insinuate that the tea party is a jamboree for violent white racists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI
- What has Pat Buchanan employing a racist got to do with the tea parties? By the way, our sitting black president for decades was a member of, and huge donor to, an overtly bigoted organisation known as the trinity church. Given this its hard to see why a black racist getting hired by an organisation unrelated to his imagined black political movement would be seized upon as evidence to delegitimatize and smear that black movement the way Wise does of the tea parties.
- WTF has a poor taste joke Ann Coulter made years ago(misquoted by Wise as is to be expected) got to do with the tea party movement?
- His whole post is premised on the idea that the tea parties have received better media treatment than other protest movements. He believes this to be evidence of white privilege. This is not just wrong but is in fact opposite to the truth.
Its has been treated far worse by most media outlets and it is precisely it's 'whiteness' that has served as a main target of attack by the New York Times, ABC, CNN, MSNBC ect. ect. When have you ever before seen inferences made about a protest movement purely based on its racial composition? Wise knows full well that a predominantly Black or Asian protest would never have its validity or motives challenged by any one of those media outlets simply because of its being predominantly black or asian.
Certainly no expert, but there are a bunch of compelling arguments which will likely lead to the AZ law being struck down: Preemption (the notion that immigration law is strictly within the purview of the Federal govt and therefore cannot be obstructed by a state immigration regulatory scheme), equal protection (state alienage laws are subject to higher judicial scrutiny than federal laws), and perhaps Fourth Amendment search and seizure violation (whether AZ cops can lawfully ask for your papers under this "reasonable suspicion" standard).
I can't imagine carrying around my birth certificate every day. Some bullshit.
There should be a fee of $5.00 for asking to see one every time.
Businesses that support stronger immigration enforcement:
Fox News
Coyotes
Some skilled Union labor
All I can think of now.
Businesses that support weaker enforcement or liberalization:
Higher Ed
High Tech
Health industry
Agriculture
construction
The only thing remotely populist about the tea party is their opposition to the bail of wall street banks and AIG.
Some business might give them some support believing that it will lead to more republican office holders which would lead to lower taxes and less regulations.
For most businesses it is more efficient to support the party or specific candidates.
Republicans are likely to do better next fall, but the Tea Party will not be a significant driving force behind the improvement.
They are likely to fuel the increase of nuts flying planes into buildings and other such behavior.
Hey man, it's spelled Xicano!
Arizona's Draconian Immigration Law Is Great ... For Our Prison-Industrial Complex
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on April 28, 2010, Printed on April 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146640/
Editor's note: This is satire.
All these liberals whining about ?racial profiling? are missing the larger point.?We?re in a recession here. Unemployment?s been hovering at ten percent. Perhaps the economy's turned a corner, but the American labor market hasn't.
Yet nobody?s really talking about how Arizona?s new immigration law is going to bring big business to the Copper State.
In 2006, when DHS only had 1.5 million people going through immigration proceedings, the?Washington Post reported that ICE held "more detainees a night than Clarion Hotels have guests, operates nearly as many vehicles as Greyhound has buses and flies more people each day than do many small U.S. airlines."
Someone?s got to guard those detainees, clean those buses and fly those planes -- we?re talking about American jobs!
In addition to its own detention facilities -- they're not called "jails" because many of those held are never charged with a crime -- ICE leases thousands of beds in 312 county and city prisons.
And we're not talking about just some European-style?government-run?prison scheme -- these include dozens of private, for-profit facilities. The immigration detention system is crucially important for major companies like Halliburton, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group. So we're talking about?private sector?jobs. And they're impossible to ship overseas!
"Housing federal detainees typically brings in more per 'man-day,'" an industry term for what is earned per detainee, "than they can get from state prison systems," wrote Leslie Berestein in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
This is one of the last remaining growth industries, and all thanks to some heavy government intervention -- stimulus of a different kind. Michele Deitch, an expert on prison privatization at the University of Texas in Austin, told the Union-Tribune that "the private prison industry was on the verge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s, until the feds bailed them out with the immigration-detention contracts."
CCA, one of the largest, has had a spectacular resurgence based in large part on changes in immigration policy. In a conference call with investors in 2008, John Ferguson, CEO of the firm, said he was optimistic that DHS's detention network would continue to expand. "We see that the budget supports the detention population of 33,000 inmate detainee beds," Ferguson said. "What I am most encouraged about is everything we are hearing says 33,000 is still not enough."
According to "The Business of Detention," by Stokely Baksh and Renee Feltz, five of CCA's "lucrative contracts to detain immigrants have no end date. Several of its other contracts contain 'take or pay' clauses that guarantee a certain amount of revenue regardless of occupancy rates, as well as periodic rate increases. All of the contracts are renewed at a rate of almost 95 percent."
The major players in the growing immigrant detention business are generous donors to the campaigns of immigration hardliners on Capitol Hill. They need to be: According to Detention Watch, releasing immigrants while their cases are pending costs as little as $12 dollars per day, and 93 percent of them show up for court. Each of the tens of thousands of detainees held in ICE's nationwide prison network costs taxpayers an estimated $95 per day, or about eight times as much. Stimulating!
These private prison companies, which were languishing just a few years ago, are now poised to build on their recent success in Arizona, a sunny new immigration police state!
Now, perhaps you?ve spotted a flaw in this ?Papers, Please? Stimulus Plan: the new law all but guarantees that migrant communities will no longer cooperate with Arizona law enforcement agencies or report serious crimes when they occur. So maybe you're wondering about all the criminals who?won?t?be caught because of the measure? Wouldn?t they have required housing, guards, transportation and the like if they'd been arrested?
Well, yes, but remember: there are far, far more people guilty of what were misdemeanor immigration offenses until last week than there are robbers, rapists and murderers!
Plus, there?s an entirely different pool of potential ? customers. People?mistakenly?identified as ?illegals?! Sure, most of those detained by ICE are unauthorized immigrants, but permanent residents,?students,?tourists, and?people seeking asylum from torture and persecution?also get swept up in the maw of Homeland Security in not-insignificant numbers.
While rare, American citizens -- mostly, but not exclusively those with Hispanic names -- get caught in the system as well. McClatchy Newspapers' Marisa Taylor told the tale of Thomas Warziniack, an addict from Minnesota who was shipped off to an Arizona detention facility a year after a Colorado Judge had confirmed that he was in fact a U.S. citizen. "The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens," wrote Taylor.
The system may be bad for Warziniack, but it's good for the Corrections Corporation of America, and that?s the same as saying it's ?good for America!?
Taylor also noted that once in the system, detainees tend to be loyal customers. "Proving citizenship is especially difficult for the poor, mentally ill, disabled or anyone who has trouble getting a copy of his or her birth certificate while behind bars," she wrote.
Many of those who police will ?reasonably suspect? of being here illegally will be poorer workers, who will have limited access to legal help. There are no guarantees of representation in immigration proceedings; there is no public defender available for low-income detainees. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, 3 out of 4 are left to navigate the system on their own.
Now, all of that is just on the detention side. But this new law also empowers any yahoo Tea Party-type with a sense of grievance -- and are there any who don't harbor such sentiments? -- to sue local officials whom they believe aren't enforcing immigration laws with sufficient zeal.
This is going to unleash a litigation bonanza that reduces unemployment among attorneys, judges, clerks, legal aides, and municipal officials to zero very quickly. In fact, they'll probably have to train people who lost jobs in other sectors of the economy just to keep up with the growing demand!
As 4 out of 5 children working in Burmese sweatshops will tell you: jobs can be more important than abstract ideas like "human rights." So just keep in mind that it's a nuanced issue.
*****
PS: Whether or not it succeeded, please note that this was intended as satire. So, for the record (and in order to avoid some very dull arguments in the comments), I do not support Arizona's new immigration law. And I am not seriously advocating expanded detention in private prisons as a means of stimulating the economy. Thanks for your attention to this matter.
I plundered?this old article?for all the quotes and data in the post above. You can find links to everything there in?the original piece.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.
? 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146640/
"Arizona Law Makes it a Crime to be Illegal Immigrant"
as much as i hate msnbc that headline is absolutely accurate. the words "illegal" and "criminal" do not mean the same thing.
a very quick check shows that immigration matters are dealt with mainly by the federal 1990 Immigration Act (IMMACT). doing something in contravention of this statue would technically be termed "illegal". the enforcement of that federal act is charged to the INS. this new arizona law puts illegal immigration now in the criminal law box as well, which is enforced by police officers and whose purpose is to dole out stigmatic punishment.
those who are caught by the INS who have overstayed or otherwise breached their visitor visas typically get deportation orders. i think if certain conditions are present (such as the likelihood of the person not showing up or complying with the order) they can be temporarily detained until such time as the order can be carried out.
that's not the same thing has a criminal conviction and being sent to an actual prison for how long is it? is the max. something like 5 years?
He rear ended my car and then tried to drive away which I prevented from happening.
When the Police arrived the interviewed him and then told me that he did not have insurance, a license or a green card.
They said they could have him deported or I could just agree to have him pay for the damages to my car.
I chose the latter, got 3 estimates and sent him all three and asked him to pay the lowest one.
A week later I received $20 in the mail with a note saying this is all he could pay, but would do so once a week until the total amount was paid off.
I never heard from him again.
I still think I made the right choice.
HA!
Arizona's Attorney General has said, in more tempered language, the same thing.
From the top Arizona law enforcement officer, on down to sheriffs and police chiefs and officers there is agreement that this law does nothing to stem the problem of Mexican drug gangs crossing the boarder, or illegal immigration.
If you do not fight your deportation you can be locked up with little or no rights.
If you fight deportation you can be locked up indefinitely with little or no rights.
Because immigrants have little or no rights and few advocates often they face a high level of abuse by prison guards.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/immigrants-locked-away-in-legal-limbo/
Funny.....I wonder if bars in Arizona will stop serving Long Island Ice Tea.
Fox News ran a similar headline. I guess this law is so stupid it's hard to condense into a headline without ending up sounding idiotic.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/...udies-programs/
SMH b/w
The Arizona state Senate on Thursday passed a bill making it illegal for a person to ?intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.?