TRACKING TRENDS
SB1070: On 28 July, less than 24 hours before Arizona's
controversial SB1070 law criminalising illegal immigrants was due to come into
force, a federal judge issued a partial injunction. The Arizona state government
immediately appealed. The legal arguments are likely to go all the way up to the
Supreme Court and therefore remain a political issue in the forthcoming mid-term
elections in the US this autumn. Nevertheless the Mexican government welcomed
the ruling by the judge, Susan Bolton.
In her judgment, Bolton accepted many
of the arguments made by the US federal government and civil rights advocates
that Arizona was usurping some of the powers that the federal government enjoys.
Bolton stopped the most important parts of SB1070, principally the requirement
that police officers could stop suspected illegal immigrants “on reasonable
suspicion" and that immigrants had to carry papers showing that they were in the
US legally at all times.
Bolton did not, however, move beyond SB1070 to try
to curb the way Arizona already enforces immigration laws. Arizona's local law
enforcement agencies already turn over more illegal immigrants to federal
authorities than any other state. In Maricopa County alone, the populist Sheriff
Joe Arpaio (under federal investigation for civil rights violations) has
assisted in the deportation of 26,000 illegal immigrants since 2007, about
one-quarter of the total deportations from the US in that period.
Florida: On 11 August Bill McCollum, the lagging candidate
in the Republican primary for the Florida state governorship, proposed
immigration reforms that go further than Arizona's controversial SB1070 law.
McCollum, currently Florida's attorney general, was challenging for the
Republican nomination for the state governorship in November. His lurch to the
Right failed and he was narrowly defeated in the primary by Rick Scott, the
frontrunner for the Republican nomination, who had been more outspoken about
immigration.
McCollum advocated a law that would require immigrants to carry
valid documentation or face 20 days in jail followed by deportation. Even more
controversially, McCollum also advocated imposing stiffer penalties on
undocumented migrants than on legal residents that commit the same offences. He
also suggested making it harder for undocumented migrants to get bail.
McCollum argued that his proposal was more targeted than the Arizona law,
because it defined the terms on which the police could arrest a suspect for
being an illegal immigrant. They would either have to admit that they were in
the US illegally or present a fake driving licence. A driving licence serves as
an identity card across the US.