Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A new crime of breathing while undocumented
New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse has an Op-Ed today explaining why she will not visit Arizona so long as the Republican supported Gestapo Bill remains in force.
What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?She does not call for a boycott, saying that each person must act according to their own conscience. But she makes it clear that you would need a conscience as withered and foul as Rush the Talking Pig to support Arizona.
And in case the phrase “lawful contact” makes it appear as if the police are authorized to act only if they observe an undocumented-looking person actually committing a crime, another section strips the statute of even that fig leaf of reassurance. “A person is guilty of trespassing,” the law provides, by being “present on any public or private land in this state” while lacking authorization to be in the United States — a new crime of breathing while undocumented. The intent, according to the State Legislature, is “attrition through enforcement.”
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