Illegal Immigration: A Nationwide Problem

While I was reading the most recent blog posts of my classmates, I came across an entry entitled, “Oh Arizona…,” located on Kelsey Scott’s Government Blog. My classmate is very passionate about the Immigration law put into place recently in Arizona. She believes that it was a necessary law and that despite the Federal government’s view, it does not discriminate against the Hispanic population. She acknowledges the fact that some law enforcement agents will take advantage of the new law, but she believes that most will actually try to enforce it as neutrally as possible. She draws most of her attention to the drug cartels in Arizona and the increasing crime rate that supposedly comes with those operations. She is 100% in support of the immigration law.

While I do agree that something needs to be done with the growing immigration population in the United States, I feel that the law that Arizona put in place may have been a little too strong. Regardless of how you small of an issue you deem discrimination as, it is a protected right in our constitution. You cannot discriminate anybody based on race. One part of the law states that, “After any lawful stop, police can "determine the immigration status" of those they suspect of being in the country illegally. Unfortunately discrimination is going to play a factor in who cops deem worthy of being a suspect, especially those of the Hispanic ethnicity. The author of the blog even acknowledged at one point that some law enforcement agents will take advantage of the law. This is a problem. The reason that the Federal government sued Arizona actually had more to do with the fact that they believe the Arizona law infringes on the Federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law.

Illegal Immigration is not just a problem seen in Arizona. Immigration is a nationwide problem. Crime rates are not just increasing in Arizona. In fact, the preliminary statistics released by the FBI show that crime rates in certain categories have decreased as much as 10%.With that being said, I feel that you really cannot use the crime rate as a reason for deporting immigrants. The main reason we need to deport immigrants is the fact that our unemployment rate is hovering around 10%, and we give up over 8 million jobs to illegal immigrants who will work for significantly lower pay. Immigration should not be left up to the states to create and enforce laws. Our Federal government needs to issue nationwide law, a law that will not violate specific rights which are protected in our Constitution, like the amendment protecting citizens from discrimination. The wording of the Arizona law was too strict and it allows for too many protests from certain ethnic groups. Plus it could also potentially lead to a huge burden on legal resident aliens, who will fear walking the streets because they could potentially be arrested. Immigration is a problem but so is discrimination. Arizona law allows for too much discrimination, and our Federal government needs to yield this opportunity to stop the states from imposing their own immigration laws by creating a law that will protect every state from illegal immigrants.