…for the Society for International Development…
The criminalization of immigration has garnered considerable media attention in the United States due to the harsh new anti-immigrant law recently enacted in the state of Arizona. That law makes it a state crime to not carry proper immigration documents (making it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second offense). Moreover, the law requires police in Arizona to determine a person’s immigration status if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an unauthorized immigrant. Needless to say, this new directive to the police is so broad and ambiguous that it is likely to promote racial stereotyping of all Latinos in the state, including legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens. The law has provoked a furious outcry from advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants, Latinos, and civil rights, which object to what they see as the targeting of an entire group of people in Arizona based on nothing more than ethnicity. Adding insult to injury, the new law comes at the same time law-enforcement officers in the state’s Maricopa County, under the leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have transformed themselves into immigration-enforcement agents. Among many other ethical and human-rights transgressions, the sheriff and his deputies in Maricopa County have used the state’s anti-smuggling law to criminally charge unauthorized immigrants with conspiring to smuggle themselves into the United States…
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Two-Tiered Justice: Anti-Immigrant Laws in the United States
The criminalization of immigration has garnered considerable media attention in the United States due to the harsh new anti-immigrant law recently enacted in the state of Arizona. That law makes it a state crime to not carry proper immigration documents (making it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second offense). Moreover, the law requires police in Arizona to determine a person’s immigration status if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an unauthorized immigrant. Needless to say, this new directive to the police is so broad and ambiguous that it is likely to promote racial stereotyping of all Latinos in the state, including legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens. The law has provoked a furious outcry from advocacy groups on behalf of immigrants, Latinos, and civil rights, which object to what they see as the targeting of an entire group of people in Arizona based on nothing more than ethnicity. Adding insult to injury, the new law comes at the same time law-enforcement officers in the state’s Maricopa County, under the leadership of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have transformed themselves into immigration-enforcement agents. Among many other ethical and human-rights transgressions, the sheriff and his deputies in Maricopa County have used the state’s anti-smuggling law to criminally charge unauthorized immigrants with conspiring to smuggle themselves into the United States…
Read the rest…