Arizona, rogue state

Arizona, rogue state

by Lexington

Here is an early version of my column, which will appear in this week's paper.

THE United States has a GDP per head of $46,000. Mexico’s is $8,000. So it is not surprising that millions of Mexicans have entered America illegally in search of a better life. A common estimate of the total number of illegals in the United States is 11m—roughly the population of Ohio. In these circumstances, you would think, America needs an agreed policy on immigration and a set of laws to match, with both the policy and laws being written by Congress in Washington. But that would require some responsible behaviour by politicians. Many have instead either abdicated responsibility or gone out of their way to act irresponsibly, dumping the issue in the laps of the courts and the police.

All this came to a head this week over Arizona’s law SB1070. This law had divided the nation. Supporters saw it as a long-overdue bid by a state to arrest and drive out illegal immigrants, a job they believe the federal government has wilfully neglected. Liberal America portrayed it as a draconian measure that would lead to racial profiling and worse, passed by a state legislature which Harper’s magazine said recently was composed “almost entirely of dimwits, racists and cranks”. On July 28th, the day before 1070 came into effect, Susan Bolton, a federal judge, responded to a lawsuit brought by the federal Department of Justice by putting a block on the most controversial parts of the law. Better to stick with the status quo, she said, than risk putting “a distinct, unusual and extraordinary” burden on legal resident aliens in Arizona.

What the law says, and what it doesn’t

Ms Bolton’s ruling merely postpones the day of reckoning for 1070, which in due course may have to go to the Supreme Court. Barack Obama said in April that the law raised the spectre of Hispanic Americans being harassed when they took their children for ice cream. Arizona’s governor, Jan Brewer, who signed the bill into law, retorts that it explicitly prohibits racial profiling. To add to the complexity, the Department of Justice’s lawsuit—one of several brought against 1070—is not even based on the question of racial profiling. Its argument is that by legislating on immigration Arizona has trespassed on federal authority and violated the supremacy clause of the constitution.

The plea of its supporters in Arizona is: read the bill for yourself. The law’s final text does not in fact allow the police to stop and investigate the immigration status of just anyone out buying ice cream for their children. Only after they have stopped, detained or arrested somebody while enforcing some other law or ordinance, and only when there is “reasonable suspicion”, are the police required to investigate whether the person is an illegal alien. Even then, they “may not consider race, colour or national origin”. As with any complex law, however, the text gets the layman only so far. To take just one example, the police may not consider race, colour or national origin “except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona constitution”. The law school of the University of Arizona concludes that 1070 is open to a range of interpretations, and that whether it leads to racial profiling will depend, in part, on how the police choose to read it.

No need to step deeper into this legal warren. At bottom the argument between Arizona and its critics is political. The stated aim of 1070 is to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, mainly by enforcing federal laws which local politicians accuse the federal government of neglecting. Although Mr Obama is in fact deporting more illegals (a total of about 400,000 a year) than George Bush did, that cuts little ice in Arizona because people know his eventual hope (or at least the one he dangles in front of Hispanic voters) is to give illegals a pathway to citizenship, not kick out as many as possible. Mr Obama’s policy was also Mr Bush’s, and is probably the only humane way forward. But in Arizona “amnesty” has been turned into a dirty word.

Why? It is too glib to say from afar that the people of Arizona are dimwits, racists and cranks. After all, 1070 enjoys support throughout the United States, including in states where Hispanics do not make up nearly a third of residents and 41% of schoolchildren, where the population has not come close to doubling since 1990, and which have not just seen a high-octane property boom end in such a devastating bust. Much of Arizona’s talk about violent crime is exaggerated (the crime rate is falling), but it is true that its porous border has turned it into America’s chief corridor for people- and drug-trafficking from Mexico. Locals say the federal government could do much more to police the border, and are incredulous when they are told it is “impossible”.

Like any state, Arizona has its bigots. But its politics are more nuanced than they seem. The state produced the conservative Barry Goldwater but also the liberal Mo Udall. Both the state’s senators are Republicans, but five of its eight congressmen are Democrats. Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University and an opponent of 1070, calls it a “fantastic, roiling, innovative state, characterised by individualism, entrepreneurship, and openness to new people and new ideas.”

How then did Arizona whip itself into its present froth? You cannot blame it all on the politicians: they only go with the wind. But those seeking re-election this November bent like straw. Governor Brewer was floundering until she signed 1070, whereupon her ratings soared. She fed the immigration panic with tall stories about beheadings in the desert. John McCain, Arizona’s senior senator, who faces a primary challenger running hard against illegal immigration, dropped his reform ideas and joined the calls to secure the border first. As for Mr Obama, nothing could be surer to inflame Arizona (while securing his own Hispanic base) than to bring a federal lawsuit against the state. America’s immigration wars are expanding into the vacuum caused by the absence of a federal policy. They will rage until it is filled.