Illegal immigration is now illegal in Arizona?

   Boy, did I learn something new in the news recently. Apparently, being an illegal immigrant is now illegal in the state of Arizona. Go figure, how the term “illegal immigrant” made any sense beforehand is anyone’s guess if what is being reported is true.

   News stations are already reporting massive migrations of illegal immigrants from Arizona to other states before the law is set to take effect this summer. Arizona will then be the only state in the Union that will allow police officers to check people’s IDs without provocation, on the probable-cause clause that they might be an illegal immigrant.

   Now, because some people don’t understand satire and tend to take my articles out of context sometimes, let me state for the record that I am not in favor of the new anti-illegal immigration bill.   

   I do believe that something needs to be done about illegal immigration however, because it is a major gap in our national security. Hell, when you’re sharing borders with a country that has had 23,000 people killed over the last three years because of drug violence, you got yourself a problem down south.     

   Not only that, but when you consider the fact that thousands of illegal immigrants waltz across the border on a weekly basis, how effective is our Homeland Security?

   The reason why I’m against this measure is because it is fighting the illegal immigration problem by illegal means, which makes absolutely no sense because you can’t take the moral high ground in any such case.

   We have the Fourth Amendment, which includes “the right against unreasonable search and seizure” within its text. That basically gives you the right to remain free from harassment by agents of the state, so long as you aren’t doing anything illegal or strongly suspected of having done something illegal (warrant anyone?). Considering that Bush and his cronies already did a number on the Fourth Amendment with the Patriot Act in 2001, this new law now gives police the right to search people without justification, which pisses all over the Constitution in its entirety.

   When you have a country that is supposedly built upon a legal framework called the Constitution, which is the highest law in the land, how the hell can you then go about overriding the highest law in the land with other, lesser laws, and still pledge your allegiance to the very same Constitution come inauguration?

   Last time I checked, you still needed a state-majority vote in order to override an Amendment to the Constitution, and the last time that happened was when Prohibition was revoked.

   The whole law is just ass-backwards in my opinion. It doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the justice system. I mean, when those in support of this law claim that it isn’t based on discrimination, they’re basically lying through the teeth.                 

   Do you figure that a police officer in Arizona is going to suspect a freckly Irishman of being an illegal immigrant? I sincerely doubt it, and I sincerely doubt that an officer is going to suspect an African-American, Asian-American, or any other race or ethnicity living in the Southwest that can’t be mistaken for Latino as an illegal immigrant.

   So given that this law is obviously directed toward a specific ethnicity (i.e. immigrants from Mexico), that makes it about as illegal as the Jim Crow laws of the past. However, this illegal measure will remain a law so long as it isn’t revoked by the federal courts (which will add more fuel to the Tea Party’s fire, I’m sure). The irony of it all is before this law is revoked, an Arizona police officer is going to suspect a Native-American of being an illegal immigrant. Mark my words, it’ll happen.

   Pros and cons aside, I see the whole issue as a political maneuver between warring parties first and foremost. Republicans are SUDDENLY up in arms over the illegal immigration issue now that Democrats have the majority rule? This in spite of the fact that our lack of border security has been an ongoing issue ever since we went to war with Mexico and took their land during the Mexican-American War (because the Mexicans didn’t want Texans practicing slavery on what was their land).

   This law is a political maneuver that the Republicans initiated, in order to further polarizea political atmosphere that has already become a lightning storm since the health care fiasco. The Democrats, being the chosen party of the Hispanic minority (the largest minority in the United States, with a population of over 47 million according to 2008 statistics), will of course stand against this bill because they have tens of millions of loyal constituents to gain in the process.

   This is how the issue will unfold: The federal government will revoke Arizona’s illegal immigration law somehow, and this will create a flurry of controversy for the right wing. Republicans and conservatives will scream “state rights!” while the Democrats will play the “racist” and “discriminatory” cards. Before you know it, we’ll be on our way to another uncivil war, a showdown at the Capitol. I can assure you that decorum will be broken, jackasses will be appalled by the rowdiness of angry elephants, and we’ll all be worse off and more divided because of the experience.