Bashing on Arizona

I’m sure you have seen the news lately, or seen the blog posts, or the facebook pages, or hell, the President himself speaking about Arizona’s immigration law. I’m sure you have (or know how to use Google), so I’ll keep this short.

The President needs to mind his business (that is, federal, not state, government), and the media needs to shut up.

Oh, that too short? Ok. A little more.

Let’s get the most important part out of the way first. The part that Obama and those who surround him seem to have completely forgotten. It is a federal crime to be in this country illegally. They are illegal immigrants. Here things are in practical terms.

The cops in Arizona find an illegal immigrant and detain him, because that is what they are wont to do when someone breaks federal law. They then call up the feds and ask them to come get whoever it is. The feds may take anywhere from a day to four months (or never) to come deal with this lawbreaker. For all of this time, Arizona is footing the bill for their stay and Arizona cops have no power to do anything. But they must hold them, because now they have told the feds that they have them. Basically, it’s just a money sink.

So, Arizona passed their own law, which, just like Federal law, makes being in their state illegally… well, illegal. So now when they discover someone is in the country illegally, Arizona cops actually have recourse that doesn’t require just sitting on their asses waiting for the feds to finally show up. That’s what this is about. I’m confident Arizona would have been just fine without making this law if the federal government had simply enforced the laws they already had.

This isn’t about Arizona suddenly trying to be tougher on immigration. This is a state that saw how the federal government refused to enforce it’s own laws to the detriment of its citizens and decided to act.

And how dare our President criticize a state for enforcing (and extending, yes) what was already federal law. Arizona made it a state offense to have committed a federal offense. And the President of the United States is too busy complaining about it instead of fixing the items that are actually under his own purview. It’s shameful, really.

I’m not sure how this will turn out for them, but bravo to them for having the guts to do what most states refuse to.