I was disappointed to see that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed legislation last week requiring police to demand identification of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. As an Arizona business owner, I am concerned about the costs of yet another unfunded mandate on law enforcement and local communities, which will face lawsuits from people who think their police force is not doing enough to clear its streets of undocumented immigrants. And since my Arizona retail stores are heavily dependent on convention business, I also have concerns about the effect the inevitable boycotts will have on businesses and their employees, especially in the larger cities.
Arizona’s law pushes the old canard that local law enforcement can solve what is in fact a federal issue. Because this law tries to tackle the issue at the point of sale, it does nothing to prevent illegal immigration or to address the structural reasons why the undocumented are here to begin with. Worse, the law opens the door to legally-sanctioned racial profiling of anyone who looks Hispanic, whether they are U.S. citizens or not–no one honestly believes that this law can be enforced any other way besides targeting people who look Hispanic. I have yet to hear a good example of what else a “reasonable suspicion” of being here illegally might look like.
My other concerns are about the opportunity costs of this law when it comes to diverting police away from dealing with more serious crimes. I know people who live in Arizon. Should they have to worry that police might be waylaid responding to serious law enforcement issues because they had to stop and check the papers of a Latino man walking to work? Because if they don’t make a habit of checking for papers, they could get sued. My guess is that the police in just about any community in Arizona have more urgent problems to spend their time on than in demanding papers from every Latino person they see.