27 April 2010

As usual

A law written broadly to respond to a single event, generally turns out...badly.

I presume there are other motivations involved (xenophobia, trade/jobs, "American" cultural heritage being lost, etc), but in general fear of crime is a powerful one to get people out and vote and active in politics. One well-publicized incident might have been "prevented" by a law like this, but this was hardly the best way to go about it.
Posted by Sun Tzu at 13:57
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7 comments:

Tragedy101 said...

Not to mention abductions have sky-rocketted in Pheonix. But then, that may actually have a lot more to do with the law than xenophobia or cultural heritage. Also the number of law-enforcement related deaths have taken a bit of a jump. I don't know, you may be right, but someone, who lives a thousand miles away, always knows how to deal with this sort of thing better than the locals.

I think it's the abductions, but I'm pretty naive.

27 April, 2010 17:43
Sun Tzu said...

Skyrocketed to what and from what?

The rate of kidnappings/abductions was down last year (2009) and the year before. Along with every other major criminal statistic.

Also, so far as I can tell the people responsible for such things are generally responsible for drug and human trafficking already (ie, smuggling) who are rounding up their competitors (other drug/human smugglers, sometimes killing them) or those competitors' families. I don't condone such behavior and they should be found and punished for it (and it seems that some variety of factors are working to reduce the rate of such things anyway. Before this law was passed).

But I also don't condone needless barriers on immigration, abandoning the 4th amendment, or the ineffectiveness of interdiction drug policies. If you supposedly want to deal with kidnapping, harassing random (mostly law-abiding, with the usual exception of immigration status) immigrants, and citizens, with ID checks is hardly going to make a dent. You don't need to be there to know that and assess the situation.

27 April, 2010 18:23
Sun Tzu said...

The key line in the article was "The crime rate in Arizona in 2008 was the lowest it has been in four decades." Phoenix may be the biggest city and may be experiencing some sort of crime wave (the statistics don't bear this out), but
1) It's not clear that this is being caused by illegal immigrants. In fact it's rather unlikely. "The past two decades have seen the fastest increase in immigration since the early part of the 20th century. The past 15 years have seen the most rapid drop in crime rates in the nation’s history." This would tend to suggest that if immigrants are causing crime, they aren't doing very much of it. The actual crime rates as studied suggest that someone else generally is responsible for criminal acts than the average Hispanic immigrant (legal or otherwise).
2) The entire state's crime rate has gone down. Perhaps it concentrated in Phoenix. In which case it would make sense for PHOENIX, the local government, to deal with the problem and not necessarily for the rest of Arizona's taxpayers to do so. If the problem is centralized approaches from some far off place, as you suggest. Since Phoenix happens to be the capital of the state, it will naturally apportion powers to itself at the expense of the rest of the state when it can.

Historically the pattern has been to demonize and terrify people at the incoming hordes (the Irish, the Germans, the Jews, the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, Indians, and Mexicans) and proclaim that they are the cause of tremendous hardships. Yet historically this pattern has been shown to be empirically false. Repeatedly. Immigration is a net "good" for a society. Crime is a net "bad". We should deal with crime and not random people who are likely unrelated to it.

27 April, 2010 18:39
Sun Tzu said...

As far as law enforcement deaths. I again question the viability of targeting immigrants. Many of the shootings (ie preventable deaths under this logic) appear to be caused by fugitives wanted on out-standing warrants for example. So far as I can tell, the Arizona police have adapted strategies to finding and detaining these folks, especially in Phoenix. Without needing to check randomly for identification.

And besides that, I don't see that there's been a jump in fatalities. If there has been, it's a jump from something like 1 or 2 per year to 4 or 5 (in Arizona total including US Marshals and ICE folks). That's bad, but it's hardly the end of the world. The total number of police deaths in the entire country was pretty well below average for the last decade anyway. Again, I'd hardly say that an extra shooting or two (even if it is of police or federal officers) is worth draconian measures.

27 April, 2010 18:59
Sun Tzu said...

"When I called his office to get a list of victims, I learned there has been only one since the beginning of 2008" - Perhaps we should take police claims about violence against police with more skepticism. This isn't even an increasing trend so much as the usual amount of people who are killed.

And the only one cop who was killed since 2008...wasn't killed by an illegal immigrant. He was shot by one of two legal American residents/citizens wanted on a felony warrant charge.

So if there was a legitimate reason for this bill, these things weren't it. These are talking points, not justifications.

28 April, 2010 10:13
Tragedy101 said...

Their state, their laws. I don't want to carry proof of citizenship, and I won't be visiting.

I don't think they need this law, and we can see how law enforcement has messed up "concealed carry".

We have all these concealed carry permits. You need a permit to carry a gun (which must be intentionally hidden in a way that people won't see it - original meaning of concealed) or the police can cite you for a "concealed" weapon, if it conceivably might not be observed - a felony offense.

You're right, I need to be a little more skeptical of law enforcement agents and agencies.

Thanks for the additional thoughts on the subject.

28 April, 2010 17:58
Sun Tzu said...

True. I wasn't planning any trips out to Phoenix either (and I'm not likely to be bothered as I'm a citizen with blue eyes anyway).

But I'm still pretty sure this law won't work to do anything they say they needed it for and will have costs in ways they don't want. Almost by definition that's a bad law. They can still pass it. It appears to be constitutional (border control or immigration controls are not restricted powers from government authorities at the state or federal level. There is a case that Arizona is preempting federal law, but I don't know how strong that case is), but that still doesn't make it a good and effective law.

28 April, 2010 19:14

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