Arizona Governor Jan Brewer

Last Friday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed immigration bill S.B. 1070 into law. Here is the fact sheet for easier reading. Some people are calling it the toughest immigration bill to date. The bill is designed to help curb crime committed by illegals in Arizona by expanding the ability of local law enforcement to aggressively enforce current laws on the books on both the state and federal level. Arizona ranks 6th on the list of states with the biggest populations of illegals currently residing in the US and has seen some of the largest population growth in the last 10 years.

The media on the left has been painting this bill akin to Nazism and state sanctioned racism, which comes at no surprise to me as that seems the typical tactic these days. If the Left can’t go after something with facts, they play the race card like it’s a pass at Disney Land.

The bill does nothing but enable law enforcement to enforce laws already on the books. Previously, an individual had to be suspect of committing a crime before a police officer could require them to provide identification. With this new law going into effect in August, the police in Arizona will be able to require individuals to produce identification on the grounds of suspicion of illegal status.

Contrary to how it is being portrayed, there are stringent controls in the bill to define criteria that must be met before police can stop you and/or require identification.

According to Governor Brewer,

“It protects all of us, every Arizona citizen and everyone here in our state lawfully. And, it does so while ensuring that the constitutional rights of ALL in Arizona remain solid — stable and steadfast.”

Later in her address she stated,

“Despite erroneous and misleading statements suggesting otherwise, the new state misdemeanor crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document is adopted, verbatim, from the same offense found in federal statute.

I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona. Because I feel so strongly on this subject, I worked for weeks with legislators to amend SB 1070, to strengthen its civil rights protections.

That effort led to new language in the bill, language prohibiting law enforcement officers from “solely considering race, color, or national origin in implementing the requirements of this section…”

The bill already required that it “shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.

While the general protection was already included, I believe the issue is so important, we needed to make it CRYSTAL clear.

And I believe that we need to more than simply inscribe it in statute.

Words in a law book are of no use if our police officers are not properly trained on the provisions of SB 1070, including its civil rights provisions.

Today I am issuing an executive order directing the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board – AZPOST — to develop training to appropriately implement SB 1070.

Importantly, this training will include what DOES – and DOES NOT – constitute “reasonable suspicion” that a person is not legally present in the United States.”

The following day, hundreds of people turned out in the streets around the capitol to protest the law, claiming it will increase racial profiling and the power of law enforcement to discriminate against Latinos through the bypassing of probable cause.

When an individual voiced his position of being for the new law, police had to step in and remove him for fear of his safety. As the police were escorting him away from the protesters, a small riot broke out, resulting in rocks and water bottles being thrown at police and 1 arrest was made.

After reviewing the video below, it is very clear that more arrests would have resulted but the police were grossly out numbered and, I am positive, fearing for their own safety as well. I think it funny how the main stream media tries so hard to portray Teapartiers as radical, violent racists ready to explode like a powder keg when it’s clear to see the violent tenancies in America today tend to reside cleanly on the Left side of the equation.

Here is another video a little closer to the action.

People say no human being should be considered “illegal”. I say they should be if they’ve committed a crime and the illegal violation of our sovereign border is not just a crime, it’s a felony.

SB 1070 was passed by a majority vote and garnered strong support from both sides of the political spectrum. It gained that support largely because of the increasing violence in Arizona and other border states and the increased financial burdens imposed on Arizonian taxpayers because of the influx of immigrants across their southern border.

This from fairus.org, The Federation for Immigration Reform.

FAIR estimates the illegal alien population in 2005 at 489,000, which is the 6th largest in the U.S among the FAIR estimate. This number is 73% above the U.S. government estimate of 283,000 in 2000, and 456% above the 1990 estimate of 88,000.

According to an estimate of the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2005 there were an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 illegal aliens living in Arizona. That ranked fifth among illegal alien populations in the United States in the PEW estimate.3/

In 2000 nearly one-third of all of Arizona’s children are either foreign born or the child of an immigrant. Seven percent are first-generation immigrants (foreign born) and 24 percent are second-generation (a child of an immigrant). FAIR estimates in 2004 that the taxpayers of Arizona spent $748.3 million per year on illegal aliens and their children in public schools.

FAIR estimated that in 2005 the cost of illegal immigrants to taxpayers in Arizona topped 1.3 Billion dollars and with the obvious increase in populous numbers, that cost has done nothing but go up.

On October 2nd, the Maricopa County, Arizona District Attorney’s office released crime statistics covering the current issues. Overall, while illegals represent only nine percent of the population in Maricopa County they are responsible for approximately 22% of the crimes committed. Here is a breakdown of statistics by crime category. Illegal aliens account for:…

33.5% of those sentenced for manufacture, sale or transport of drugs.
35.8% of those sentenced for kidnapping.
20.3% of those sentenced for felony DUI.
16.5% of those sentenced for violent crimes.
18.5% of those sentenced for property crimes.
44% of those sentenced for forgery and fraud.
85.3% of those convicted of criminal impersonation or false ID.
96% of those convicted of human smuggling.

In Maricopa County, when looking at the incarceration rate vs Offenses per 100,000 of populous since 2004 and up until the end of 2008, you can clearly see that there is a direct corollary between the two figures. A tougher approach to law enforcement by Sheriff Joe Arpiao -including additional training on immigration enforcement for his deputies by ICE- coupled with increased cooperation between his offices and the Maricopa County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, crime has fallen dramatically. Since 2004, the county has seen a decrease in crimes committed per 100,000 in populous by 8% from 2007 to 2008 and an overall 18% decrease since 2004. Incarceration rates over the term increased over 29%.

These deceases in the crime rate can be directly attributed to Sheriff Arpaio’s efforts to curb illegal immigration in Maricopa County and a strong dedication to enforcing current laws while others , like San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, insist on providing a safe haven by openly choosing not to enforce current immigration laws. I posted about California’s issues here last month.

According to the Cochise County sheriff, problems associated with illegal immigration cost residents 37 cents of every tax dollar they pay. Cochise County is a border town in Arizona, and shares 84 miles of border with Mexico.

Regardless of what some may want you to believe, border states like Arizona have a real problem on their hands. Some residents are afraid to leave their homes alone at night.

On the heels of reports surrounding the killing of Robert Krentz, an Arizona rancher in Cochise County, people have had enough. Investigators said that Krentz was likely killed by an illegal immigrant who wanted the ATV he was riding on his property. After being shot Krentz attempted to drive away from the individual and later died traveling to get help.

18-20% of our prison system’s population are illegal immigrants while they only account for 3 to 5% of the over all population in the United States. California’s prison system is now inundated with illegals, primarily from Mexico. As of 2005, 240,000 incarcerated nationally were illegal immigrants.

Proponents of illegal immigration claim that these people, although a felon the second they cross our border illegally, are simply hard working people looking for a better life. I think the numbers speak for themselves and put that soundly to rest.

It’s high time we address the real issue here. It isn’t that they just need a “break” and will be productive members of our society. They have proven that wrong time and time again. For what ever reason, be it cultural or moral, the raw facts show a great number of people illegally crossing the border from the south are not the type of people we wanted to welcome into our country with the statement, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The fact that illegal border crashers are felons the second they jump the fence must be addressed. Our enabling of their crime just cheapens our own citizenship and what was sacrificed to provide the freedom and liberty bestowed to us. The fact that the current Administration is doing nothing about the issues furthers the evidence that they view these people as nothing more than another base of voters to pander to.

As I outlined here, there are solutions to this problem that can provide for the safety and well being of citizens and provide an avenue for those wishing to come here to do so legally. Because we have allowed the problem to foment for so long, we made made  it necessary to make some hard decisions as well such as the deportation of individuals discovered as illegal with no exceptions and a hard line needs to be taken with the Mexican Government who, by all accounts, openly encourages it’s citizens to cross illegally.

Not all those wishing to come here from Mexico represent a criminal element. I’ve been to Mexico and have met many generous, kind and wonderful people there. Many who are here illegally would gladly live in Mexico if only they could support the same lifestyle and prosperity that they enjoy in the US but the law is the law. If any other nation in the world were experiencing the kind of frequent violations of their sovereign border as we do every day, they would dispatch their military in force and view what the Mexican Government is endorsing as an act of war.

If we choose not to be the Nation of laws as set forth by our Founders, choose not to be a Republic, then we have nothing. Our laws have been put in place not only to protect the citizen but also to protect and enforce our founding documents which are the foundation of our free society. We can not selectively choose where and when we will enforce and uphold our laws. They must be applied justly and evenly to everyone.

Kudos to Arizona for looking out for and protecting their citizens by taking care of the issues the Federal Government refuses to address. Maybe, just maybe, this will help people understand why most things in our Nation were meant to be addressed at the local and not Federal level.

We used to say, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” There was a time when people still actively described America as containing mountains of gold and opportunity and people flocked to our shores in droves. These people came to America with nothing but the clothing on their backs and the drive to build a life for themselves as Americans.

These individuals changed their names to sound more American. In the 1860’s my great, great -insert a few more- Grandfather, when entering this Nation from Ireland, changed his last name from the traditional Irish name he had all his life to something he felt would allow him to assimilate better into American society. They wanted to learn English and had a strong desire to fit into the new culture they were thrust into after leaving Ellis Island for the first time. It wasn’t an easy proposition to be dropped in the middle of a city, in a strange place where you’ve never been and can’t speak the local language but these people thrived. They learned the language, the customs and the system. They started businesses and became self sufficient. Some of the largest corporations we see today got their start in some small shop by individuals who came from a different land. Flash forward to today and things have changed quite a bit.

The immigrants that come to America today are not too terribly different than 150 years ago. More tend to be able to speak English than before and are, by the statistics, more likely to start a small business than even natural born Americans. What has changed in the 21st century is not the nature of immigrants, it’s immigration itself; the illegal immigration problem.

During the 1920’s, illegal immigration was the subject of heated Congressional debates. Edward H. Dowell, vice-president of the California Federation of Labor, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Immigration in February of 1928 about the burden of the unrestricted flow of Mexicans on the state’s taxpayers, prisons, hospitals and American workers’ wages. He estimated that while 67,000 Mexicans entered the U.S. legally the prior year, many times that number entered illegally.

Workers in the US were already feeling the crunch from the influx of illegals coming across the border to gain agricultural work to support their families in Mexico. By the time Eisenhower took office, the amount of illegal Mexican border crossings were estimated at exceeding 1 million annually. There is currently no way to reliably track these numbers. All figures are estimates and are refuted to be both much higher and also much lower depending on who is doing the refuting but one thing is for certain, this Nation has a real problem on their hands.

For some the issue lies within the employment sector of our economy, claiming these “migrant workers” are taking jobs away from Americans that need work but can’t find it. We have over 15,000,000 unemployed in the US right now and an estimated 12 to 30 million illegals working primarily in the lower skilled agricultural marketplace. Quite a bit of the money paid to these illegals ends up getting pulled out of our economy and gets sent back home to Mexico to help support their families. While the individuals are in our country, they take advantage of all the services we offer to citizens but pay very little out in taxes aside from meager sales tax revenue and gas sales. The larger issue here is not jobs, it’s the strain on our economy from the usage of services and the collection of monies from entitlement programs.

It was reported a few days ago that in Los Angeles County, California, 50 million dollars was spent in the support of anchor babies and their illegal immigrant parents just for the month of June. At the current rate, the county alone will end up paying out over 600 million dollars this year just to illegal immigrants and their American born children. These numbers do not include medical care, public safety costs or the costs associated with supporting those incarcerated within the county’s jail and prison systems.These individuals also take advantage of many other public, tax payer funded, services such as fire/EMS, law enforcement, public education, public roadway infrastructure, sewer/sanitation services and other often over looked services which have to be paid for through tax revenue collected at both the county and state level. When you factor in all the other services, the over all cost to the county skyrockets to a whopping 1 billion dollars. Another thing to be considered here is the interest that must be paid on the public debt incurred to provide the 1 billion dollars in services on the county level.

While contributing significantly less in tax revenue to the communities where they live, households comprised of illegal immigrants collect an average of 10,000 dollars more per year in welfare benefits than those who are here legally. While Americans tend to contribute more than they take during working years and take more than they contribute during their shorter retirement years, illegals who are low skilled workers tend to take more than they contribute to the public coffers right from the get go.

18-20% of our prison system’s population are illegal immigrants while they only account for 3 to 5% of the over all population in the United States. California’s prison system is now inundated with illegals, primarily from Mexico. As of 2005, 240,000 incarcerated nationally were illegal immigrants. The startling figure is that over 108,000 of them were incarcerated in California. Since 2005, these numbers have greatly increased.

Proponents of illegal immigration claim that these people, although a felon the second they cross our border illegally, are simply hard working people looking for a better life. I think the numbers speak for themselves and put that soundly to rest. The crime rate among illegals in this country is staggering. In the city of Los Angeles, 95% of the 1200+ outstanding warrants for homicide target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of the 17,000 fugitive felony warrants are for illegals.

I’m not sure I can feel sorry for California in all this considering how utterly welcoming they have been over the years, opening their arms wide to the problem with sanctuary cities and law enforcement scared of being accused of “profiling” people. They have allowed the issues in the front door and now they have an out of control shortfall topping well over 20 billion dollars and a Latino gang population bigger than most other states combined. They have some real issues that, if not dealt with quickly, will end the state as we know it. As of this writing, people are leaving California at unprecedented levels and soon they will be left with nothing but those sucking off the teet of their liberal disease. They must pass sweeping welfare and immigration reform now before it is too late. But what can be done?

The most prevalent thing I hear from the pro-immigration people is amnesty which will serve nothing but to legitimize the law breaking, society draining illegals and allow for massive chain migration. The immigrant population would double almost over night and our Nation doesn’t have the room nor the economic facilities to deal with that. We would see the welfare rolls exponentially increase as well as our local, state and federal publicly held debt. Think this recession is bad now? While all they have to offer is “legalize em’” to make the problem go away and create a new Democrat army of minority voters, they always complain that no one else ever offers a solution to the problem so I’ve decided to offer one.

It is important that those who need a safety net to maintain food for their children and a roof over their heads has that safety net but this is out of control and creating a great hardship for Californians and American’s in general. Welfare should be a temporary way for individuals to get back on their feet, not to support them for the long term. We need to be realistic here. Thinking with your heart is a great thing but only if the results are fiscally sustainable. In California, the current system is bankrupting the entire state.

I’m not against immigration and welcome those who wish to come to our country legally with open arms.

I am, however, against illegal immigration and something other than legitimizing them needs to happen. Immigration reform should absolutely NOT include amnesty.

Here we go…

1. Close the border and spend the money to properly patrol it. If you want to come in to this country, make it impossible to bypass law enforcement or border customs to enter.

2. Hold the Mexican Government accountable for fostering and encouraging the influx of their people coming across the borders into our Country. They give out guides on how to sneak into our country to their citizens and openly encourage it. We should use our trade with Mexico as a tool to send them a message that their encouragement of the behavior either stops or we sanction them, period. Withhold any and all financial aid if they don’t want to cooperate. We also need to REQUIRE that the Mexican Government pays for the costs associated with the internment of all the Mexican illegals within our prison system. Any other country in the world would have threatened military action against Mexico for this open violation of the sovereignty of international borders.

If these people could live as well in Mexico as they can here in the United States they would all HANDS DOWN stay there. Quite a large number of these illegal’s actually spend harvest here and then take their American dollars home for the winter to Mexico. If the Mexican Government could get a handle on the drug trade and start to create real honest opportunity for the Mexican people, the amount of people coming north would GREATLY fall off. One of the issues with the Mexican Government is their strong feelings of being elite and better than the people they govern. Not so different than here but our founders did a much better job of controlling the elitism with precepts contained within our founding documents.

3. Hunting down and rounding people up on buses is not logistically possible and the propensity for issues including abuse and lawsuits is huge. Instead, anyone caught in the commission of a crime or is otherwise found, through normal legal process, to not have legal status to be here should be deported immediately, including their American born minor children, unless deportation represents putting them in immediate harm’s way. NO SANCTUARY CITIES unless the cities giving sanctuary don’t mind a complete ceasing of any and all federal subsidies for their infrastructure and school systems. State Governors allowing their Mayors to create sanctuary cities should also see stiff penalties and sanctions when putting their hands out for federal assistance. This is a harsh way to do things but it still puts the ball in their court and allows them to make the choice themselves. Stop breaking the law or face these consequences.

4. Go after the employers who employ these individuals. If we take the reasons away that drive them here in the first place, less will attempt to enter the US illegally. Anyone who says, with over 15 million unemployed Americans, that they can’t find non-illegal laborers is full of horse hooky. Maybe we should be mandating that citizens who are currently on public assistance and unemployed should be out in those fields working instead of the illegals. If they don’t like the work, they can opt-out of receiving welfare checks and food stamps and find better employment elsewhere.

5. All encompassing term limits on public assistance, with the exception of people who are physically incapable of caring for themselves, i.e. mentally or physically disabled, elderly or the infirm. There is no reason why, within two years, an individual can’t become self sufficient in this nation to the point of not needing welfare. There is no reason why people can’t be responsible enough to know, if you have unprotected sex, you more than likely WILL get pregnant. We need a return of personal accountability and responsibility in this Nation and the only way that will happen is if our communities and Governments begin to HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.

6. Streamline the process for those wishing to enter legally so the wait goes from 8 to 10 years down to a few. This is the Nation of Nations. I don’t hate Immigrants. Unless you’re full blooded Cherokee, your family’s journey started here through immigration as well. Both sides of my family immigrated here.

7. NO CHAIN IMMIGRATION. The only way a baby born in the US receives citizenship is if they were born to a US citizen. Period.

8. Develop and build an international network of free Nations willing to help give asylum to individuals from violent or tyrannical Nations. UNICEF would be an awesome organization to help spearhead this. America IS the land of the free and the home of the brave but we are but one Nation among many who should be helping to care for those at risk and in danger. Those truly needing political asylum make up a very small amount of our illegal immigration problem but this needs to be addressed just the same. This system would spread the burden thinner.

One way or the other, we need REAL reform and we need it NOW. We need reform that first and foremost addresses the economic impact of the situation and, 2nd, takes into account the needs of Americans before the needs of individuals elsewhere. We have people right here in this country that need a hand up and children about to apply for college without knowing how they’re going to pay for it.