Barry Hess is running for the Libertarian nomination for governor of Arizona. In a position paper on Arizona’s new immigration enforcement measures, Hess calls SB1070 “anti-rights” and “anti-constitutional,” and criticizes the governor for signing it into law, stating: “The Governor has just given her approval to Arizona becoming a police state, claiming the legislation will somehow make ‘us’ safer—by putting all of us in a nice cozy cell.” Hess’s full statement, via email:
The Governor and others have fooled the people of Arizona into thinking this bill has something to do with fixing the problems created by illegal immigration—it does not. Even a cursory reading of the bill makes it abundantly clear that it serves only to infringe upon the rights of all Arizonans by effectively creating a national ID while giving officers of the State complete immunity for violations against individuals’ rights, and making the taxpayers foot the legal costs that will inevitably follow.
The legislation purports to give police officers (and others) the authority to stop suspected illegals and detain them indefinitely until proof of Citizenship is established. Even before the legislation goes into effect, the police have already begun what is bound to be an aggressive policy of profiling, stopping and harassing legal Citizens with impunity. Skin color has nothing to do with it.
Summarizing the anti-rights and anti-constitutional aspects of this poorly-crafted and ill-conceived election cycle contrivance that the Governor admitted in her announcement already needs a ‘rider’ to ‘fix’, is easy; government can not cast a net over all of us, just to catch a few ‘bad’ people. But that’s exactly what it does.
All of us now face the inevitable circumstance where, just as in 1940s Germany, supposedly ‘free’ people can be stopped, detained without arrest and ordered by anyone with an official badge to produce their “papers” and ‘prove’ their citizenship, no matter where they are. The very idea runs afoul of the anonymity and the freedom to travel unimpeded in a society that claims to be ‘free’. The Governor has just given her approval to Arizona becoming a police state, claiming the legislation will somehow make ‘us’ safer—by putting all of us in a nice cozy cell.
The bill’s allowance for ‘discretion’, and complete immunity by officials of the State makes it completely untenable. One should question the judgment of the Governor in rushing this junk law through when she admitted it is flawed and needs ‘fixing’. One should ask, “Why now, why not after it was ‘fixed’?” The answer is obvious—political perception of her bid for election as Governor…the position she said she didn’t want, before she slid into it upon Janet Napolitano’s departure.
Probably the most counter-productive part of the bill pertains to the so-called ‘employer sanctions’. In virtually every case, employers who hire ‘illegals’ also employ far more ‘legals’. Shutting these businesses down doesn’t just ‘punish’ the evil employer—it also adds a lot of ‘legals’ to the unemployment roles. That doesn’t seem to be real smart given the current record high unemployment we are experiencing amidst this Depression and economic turmoil.
I spoke to the Minuteman organization the night before they dis-banded. It was not a surprise to hear that by their own estimates, illegal immigration was down over 80% so there was nothing for them to do. It appears that the Depression alone has discouraged ‘illegals’ for us, because there’s no opportunity here anymore.
Now the only ‘illegals’ coming across truly are the ‘bad guys’ we’ve all heard so much about. So, how can we stop them? I will be submitting my proposal very soon, but in sum, my plan actually stops illegal immigration before ‘illegals’ can even cross the border. Using passive denial systems that were ironically developed by government for use against Americans who wouldn’t ‘behave’, we can stop all attempts to illegally migrate without waiting on a useless fence or wall to be built. Denying physical entry altogether will save the taxpayer all of the costs associated with incarceration, feeding, clothing, sheltering, prosecuting and deporting illegal trespassers.
Requiring only those who seek any assistance from government services of any kind, to prove Citizenship makes a lot more sense and will immediately plug the drain on medical and social services being siphoned off by ‘illegals’, and not burden the free Citizens of Arizona.
Instead of shutting businesses down for hiring ‘illegals’ and putting American Citizens out of work, I will suggest a certain penalty to be paid by the employer that will certainly make taking the risk of hiring ‘illegals’ unattractive, but not fatal.
Non-American, criminal ‘illegals’ will be treated first, as criminals, and after prosecution/detention/punishment, will suffer a lifetime prohibition against re-entry.
And finally, should the Federal Government continue to abdicate it’s responsibility to clearly define immigration policy and standards, I will seek to implement the same well-thought-out policy that applies to immigrating to Mexico. They deport more ‘illegals’ than the US, and their experience is clear from the laws they’ve put in place.
I prefer lower cost, more effective and non-rights-trampling alternatives than does the current Governor, and I believe the people of Arizona do, too.
SB 1070 may not be the only thing dead within 3 months…Machete is on the case 😛
If Mr. Seebeck’s comments indicate his level of competent analysis, I will assume he’s never performed such a function for anyone else, and definitely never been hired to do so. One’s head spins to think the LPCA would rely on this kind of gibberish.
Full of myself? Maybe, but I’m not the one babbling that his in-laws share my name, as if anyone cares who Mr. Seebeck is related to.
His tangents are amazingly irrelevant and suggest both incompetence and insecurity. My assessment? Not worth my time or consideration.
My facts are accurate, and I happen to know all the players personally, very well (I have, and use their private numbers). My legal schooling helps with the translation to common language. Mr. Seebeck may want to consult a legal dictionary before he opens hi yap.
I’m not a betting man, but I’d wager SB1070 will be null and void (because of the problems I’ve pointed out) within 3 months. Start the clock.
oH AND BTW…. how many legal americans drive without registration/ car insurance and up to date drivers licenses..A LOT!!!! anti-establish crap is old….and if you had any wisdom..you would take care of your own backyard before name dropping to a cop to try and look important!
Who here thinks that the police set up “check points” just to harass people?? Come on, THE POLICE are trying to get the thousands of drunk and high people off the streets that are killing innocent people on hwys everywhere!! Get off this “violating my civil rights” bs….If you have nothing to hide…you would not be so defensive. Quit breaking the rules…Rules are made to stop total social anarchy…and YES people have shown they cannot govern themselves!!! Look at the housing bust all those people that borrowed and then didn’t want to pay it back..also the greedy banks mortgage brokers real estate agents WE CAN’T run our own lives we almost bankrupted our WHOLE country!! YES WE THE PEOPLE did this to us…..So shut up stop at the check points show your friggen ID and be happy someone is trying to curtail A TRAGEDY!!
MS@18
“The effects on cops remains to be seen as well, but I find it interesting that the Pima County sheriff has indicated that he will not enforce the law as he is sworn to do. That seems to me to compound the problem of police abuse of the people instead of doing their sworn duty.”
This brings an interesting point to light. Sheriffs have a lot of influence over how laws are enforced in their counties. What do we think of police that make liberty based judgment calls?
The Oathkeepers identify several areas where they feel the constitution trumps legislation as they carry out their duties.
Some counties in California are more liberty minded than others on the medical marijuana issue because of the sheriff’s office decisions regarding issuing cards and dispensaries or cooperatives licensing enforcement.
Enforcing this law could very easily put a law enforcement officer and his department in a serious civil rights breach. If civil rights safe enforcement is even possible (which I doubt), it could only be done with intense command scrutiny and training. Probably more than is possible for most police public contact situations like traffic stops and domestic calls. It does not seem unwise at all to instruct your deputies to NOT try and enforce it.
The points about real issues of border violence and the drug war are very perceptive. But the issue is hard to take a Libertarian stand on and still sell a holistic message of liberty to the border ranchers. They are busy defending against aggression and trying to tell them to be less general in their discrimination is not an easy sell. That does not mean that we should equivocate on principle to try and make friends.
Reaching out to people on an issue based on pointing guns at brown people does not seem like the best approach for Libertarians except to demand justice for the people suffering institutional aggression:
1. The people who are not allowed to move freely about the earth.
2. The people who are taxed for services they do not want to have to provide for everyone on earth under the equal protection clause.
3. Those who are caught in the middle of a an economic war’s fracture zone where black market activity like slavery and smuggling is rampant and dangerous to peace loving people …on both sides of the border.
How’s the Inland Empire doing on public relations ??????
Point of information: Mr Seebeck speaks for himself, and not for The Riverside County Libertarian Party.
I am Chair of the Riverside County Libertarian Party and we have not taken a position on the Arizona law.
Reading through this while in CO over the weekend, and checking the law out, I found that Outside Analysis was correct in his facts and Mr. Hess, while not related to my in-laws except for name spelling (thank goodness for me and them), seems to be full of himself while at the same time being inaccurate on his “facts”. Inside Analysis is simply spouting nonsense.
Keep in mind that I do legislation and ballot analysis for LPCA, so I have a track record of knowing how to research this stuff. The state of AZ is not taking over for the Border Patrol, building any fences, or running any Customs Posts. Any claim that the state is doing ICE’s work is bogus. What they are doing is cleaning up after the federal government’s ineptitude, and the reason the feds are in an uproar over it is because it exposed that very thing. Obama says it isn’t fair. I’ve got news for Obama, life isn’t fair, and there’s a good chance HE might get detained in Arizona by a birther cop. That would be ironic and somewhat hilarious.
The effects on employers in this bill are minimal, only in recordkeeping, and that’s not a bad thing because it helps cover their ends. The boycotts and buycotts will cross-cancel each other and fizzle out as people realize that penalizing private employers for the acts of the public government is just stupid and pointless and causes more harm than help.
The effects on illegal aliens remains to be seen, but the reality of it, at least here in southern CA, is that there is a large resentment among the legal and citizened Latino population here against the illegals. I expect to see an influx of illegals out of AZ and into neighboring states, including here in CA, and even a possible downwards blip in the AZ unemployment rate.
The effects on cops remains to be seen as well, but I find it interesting that the Pima County sheriff has indicated that he will not enforce the law as he is sworn to do. That seems to me to compound the problem of police abuse of the people instead of doing their sworn duty.
The effects on the populace remains to be seen as well. However, I did hear that a business that did a hiring fair after they had to fire 300 illegals had 1500 citizens show up.
The reasons this bill came into play are numerous: the War on Drugs with its resultant Mexican Civil War, the welfare state, sanctuary cities, everyone-gets-care-emergency rooms, MS-16’s roles in coytoting and muling, including suspected members of Al-Qaeda, and a general frustration with the federal government for having its priorities mixed up. None of those reasons are being addressed, and still won’t be for at least a few months until a blow against them can be struck in CA by legalizing cannabis, but regardless of that, the proper way to address this is to point out the causes and indicate that the solution to the immigration issue lies in those problems being solved.
The reality is that in the here and now, a cop can stop you for any reason, even a made-up one, and demand to see your ID, and you are required to comply or be arrested for vagrancy, resisting an officer, disorderly conduct, and anything else they can think of. It isn’t right, but it is happening, and that is the reality. Here in CA the LASD has been running driver’s license checkpoints, and I’ve shut down two of them myself when I told the OIC he was violating federal law and namedropped the US Attorney and the ACLU on them, and quoted him the applicable laws (Delaware v. Prouse, 18 USC 242).
I’m no fan of race-based anything, unless you mean the Indy 500, but it seems to me to be a very simple tenet at play: Good fences make good neighbors.
Sorry about the long post, but sometimes it takes words to say it correctly.
Mr. Hess’s comments are great.
The Arizona immigration bill needs to be applied by law enforcement as a loitering law, then it becomes legal and within police jurisdiction to check citizenship status.
What this “new” law is going to create is more angry and fearful feelings towards anglo’s as they will be seen as
“snitch” mean gringo etc…..I feel that the backlash toward whitey by (a few)
will be ugly. When people become fearful..and their livelihoods endangered…they take sometimes agressive measures. Which just makes this world MORE divided and segregated. So here we are 2010, and we haven’t gained much….lines drawn…you go there….you can’t come here…don’t drink from this water faucet unless you are legal….Gawd oH mighty!! dirty looks from both sides…suspicion great….just great….I am for granting amnesty….IF THEY become American…..they will have ss cards and help pay into the system…and perhaps be proud of their new home…..I said perhaps…
Let me introduce everyone to Abdon. Abdon is a man with brown skin. This makes him a suspect subject to arrest and detainment until he can prove his innocence.
http://www.azfamily.com/video/featured-videos/Man-says-he-was-racially-targeted-forced-to-provide-birth-certificate-91769419.html
Any mullet headed retard can regurgitate legalese. It takes a little bit of real world experience to understand practical implications.
OA writes: “There is NOTHING in the bill that requires LEOs to arrest everyone, but it does require them to verify status in the normal course of their daily work.”
Any new tool for law enforcement is just one more weapon that will be wielded against the people of this country by the agents of its government. This law will quickly become nothing more than a tool of harassment and intimidation of the population at large by the creeping police state.
Creo que sería bueno que todos los estadounidenses aprendieron un poco de español. Tal vez menos histéricos, entonces?
Sry, my spanish is pretty high school.
The most interesting comment I’ve heard was from a third generation anglo Arizonan who felt all the immigrants from the midwest and south had AZ more racist against hispanics.
It’s just the same old Know Nothingism that has always plagued teh US. I think it has to do with being a colonial settler nation, as compared to say, older nations. there’s always this hysterics from the previous wave of immigrants and their children’s children against any new waves of foreign migration to the US.
Well we know who won’t be governor of Arizona
Hi Outside –
You say that the new law “Allows LEOs to stop a vehicle engaged in human smuggling for a traffic violation (that wasn’t in the law before, surprisingly)” I don’t genuinely understand. What could LEO’s not do before? Stop a vehicle for a traffic violation? Or is it that if they discovered human smuggling on such a stop they couldn’t do anything about it?
What’s your view on federal pre-emption re: these laws?
Thanks!
To anonymous outsider;
We disagree. Verbosity, I’ve always held, is akin to insecurity, and I simply don’t have the time to heal you. We’ll see what comes of it all, one way or the other. That there remain serious differences of perception answers the question of why a bill that Ms. Brewer said herself was flawed, was jammed through before correction.
Barry, political comprehension means the law says what it says. In this case, you should already know that a national ID is already in ObamaCare, unless you didn’t read that bill, too, and that your own state of AZ is clearly against Real ID, which is why that provision is in there TWICE at both 11-051-F and Section 12-D. You should also already know that AZ has banned both Real ID and enhanced drivers licenses at ARS 28-336 and 28-338, respectively. So to claim the opposite of what is already codified in the state law is an epic FAIL.
If you don’t know the laws of your own state, then why are you running for governor and spouting obvious false statements?
—–
Inside,
I have read the bill, in its entirety. Have you? Do you have any clue how legislation is written or implemented, or do you just buy into the propaganda and hysterics?
Since you refer to 11-051-E, you really ought to realize the obvious, that removal of a non-explicit prohibtion on reporting (which was never there explicitly in the first place, so it really wasn’t a prohibition!) by a new section of law does not require such information to be reported to the feds. It only creates the option, and only for very specific circumstances (state benefits, residence claims for the court, federal register for immigrants). Further, that specific section parallels current federal law in 8 USC 1373 and 1644, and even puts itself in accordance to it. So you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
As for information gathering and sharing, the feds already do that in means that most people don’t have a clue about and if they did, they’d crap their pants. Cell phone tower signal triangulations, card transactions, OnStar, GPS, those are the ones people know about. The cyberwarfare world has many more, most of which are classified from the general public and are run by NSA, FISA courts ignored or rubber-stamped.
As for the rest of the bill, it’s pretty straightforward. Here’s the facts:
– No sanctuary cities or other blocking of immigration enforcement
– LEOs can check status on suspicion if probable cause for a different contact.
– Status checked on all arrests
– Race, skin color, or national origin profiling not allowed by LEOs or government agencies
– AZ DL/ID, tribal/BIA card, federal IDs, state DLs/IDs that require proof of legal presence are all evidence of legal status, including green cards. (Passports, BTW, are not listed).
– Illegal aliens, when convicted, do the time or pay the fine, then get reported to ICE.
– LEOs can transport illegals to ICE facilities in-state or out-of-state with court approval.
– Legal residents can file complaints of violations, with fines of $1K-5K per day between filing and findings in court, with loser-pays rules on attorney fees.
– Establishes the Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission (GIITEM) for enforcement and jail reimbursement that the feds aren’t doing.
– If an illegal alien is not registered and fingerprinted with the feds as required by law, then they’re committing a state misdemeanor as well, unless circumstances (drugs, weapons, meth tools, or terrorist tools) make it a felony. (Quick question: do you know what drugs *aren’t* on the list? It might surprise you!)
– Allows LEOs to stop a vehicle engaged in human smuggling for a traffic violation (that wasn’t in the law before, surprisingly)
-Prevents blocking traffic to hire day workers, prevents day workers from seeking work in public, or from getting in those vehicles that are blocking traffic looking to hire day workers, with the vehicles being subject to impoundment
– LEO can arrest for a public offense that is deportable (allows arrest for being illegal alien, where the heart of the complaining is, but probable cause is still necessary in the first place, which the complainers ignore)
– Employers can claim entrapment as a defense under certain circumstances. Employing illegal aliens was already unlawful before this.
– Employment verification records now kept the longer of employment term or three years.
– Coyote work or assistance of coyote work can lead to vehicle impoundment.
So, yes, I do tend to know what I’m talking about here. There is NOTHING in the bill that requires LEOs to arrest everyone, but it does require them to verify status in the normal course of their daily work. Employing illegal aliens was already unlawful, and this didn’t change that.
What the pro-immigration crowd keeps seeing here is hysterics and inane rhetoric before it is even implemented. Why? Because they simply do not want to go through the proper channels to do it legally.
Lost in the crowd is similar laws already on the books and being enforced in Oklahoma and Georgia.
And I remain anonymous here of my own choice, so I don’t have to deal with emails from people who don’t understand what Rule of Law means.
To Inside Analysis;
Thank you.
To (anonymous) “Outside Analysis”;
Yes, I have read and studied the bill, and of course the section you refer to. It may SAY it’s not, but that would tip off anyone with any legal/political comprehension, that it REALLY is.
R.I.C.O./Assets Forfeiture statutes come immediately to mind–they ‘ said’ it wouldn’t be used against the common citizenry–only against the Mafia. Now they’re used in virtually all circumstances (from not mowing your yard to smoking pot in your car) simply to steal people’s property without regard to constitutional Due Process.
I would have thought that anyone hiding behind a fake name with ‘analysis’ in it, would actually analyze what they are commenting on.
Fortunately, it will be struck down by the Courts…..
@ Outside Analysis:
blah blah blah. nice try, better luck next time.
F. is nothing more than bait and switch lies.
Real ID 2005 was a specific legislative act with specific requirements that was to allow the Feds to take our info from the state by force.
This bill merely has the State turn the EXACT same data over the Feds VOLUNTARILY.
So of course, this bill doesn’t implement the “Real ID act of 2005”, it just accomplishes the EXACT objective: the total collection, sharing and linking – the databasing of all of our information in the hands of the Feds.
The goal of real id and national id is NOT some fancy new driver’s license or passport, but the collection and sharing of our information.
They LIED to you and you bought it.
So why don’t you go back and read the bill yourself, read and understand where it says the “state may not be prohibited or in any way be restricted from sending, receiving or maintaining information relating to the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual or exchanging that information with any other federal, state or local governmental entity”
The Feds don’t NEED Real ID act of 2005 when the state will VOLUNTARILY hand over the EXACT SAME DATA they wanted.
Russell just advanced the goals of Big Government under the guise of illegal immigration and you bought the bait and switch; hook, line and sinker.
The illegals will never get sent back, because the law will become null and void in a very short time
Hess hasn’t read the bill.
New section 11-051-F explicitly says the bill has nothing to do with REAL ID, for one example.
Read it for yourelf at http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070h.pdf
That’s politics. Seldom, if ever, does a bill’s name reflect the true intent of its writers or the effect it will have on our rights. I actually read and study the bills.
Why would Arizona enact steps towards a new National ID when they were one of only a dozen states that had legislation pending against the National ID card?