Of Immigrants and 40s

Like most of the country, I've been following the Arizona immigration law fiasco rather closely. And the more I've considered the situation, the less sense it makes (assuming, for the moment, that there are no political motivations involved on the part of the Administration - which is a HUGE assumption) that the Administration would oppose a law that, for all intents and purposes, mirrors the current federal law that covers the same offense. In fact, the Arizona law is not as far reaching as the federal statute. So I was more than a little perplexed when a federal judge shot down portions of the law (which Arizona will no doubt appeal). As the days passed after the decision, I became aware of more details about the judge's verdict. And the one detail that really grabbed my attention was this: if an Arizona police officer pulls over a van packed full of people for having a broken tail light - a van traveling in a known human trafficking area - a van packed full of people of apparent Mexican descent, that officer is not allowed to verify the immigration status of anyone in the van.

Now some people will look upon that as a good thing. They'll say that it prohibits the police from using race as a reason to persecute the populous. Now, leaving alone the fact that the federal government does actually retain that power, let's examine this scenario for a moment from a different perspective.

Suppose, for a moment, that a young black man is driving a through a known gang area of an urban American city. His automobile is a Caprice Classic with 22" spinning wheels, painted with a gaudy aftermarket paint job and he has a pot leaf decal covering much of the rear window. And he has a tail light out. When an officer pulls this man over, he notes that the driver is wearing gang colors. Chances are this officer, who now has probable cause and a valid excuse, will ask the man to exit the vehicle and search it. He'll search it for open 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor. He'll search it for drugs. He'll search it for weapons. He'll search it for anything illegal. And no one in Washington will utter as much as a whimper.

So what has happened is that the federal government has dictated that Arizona law enforcement can, after a law has knowingly been broken, and probable cause has been established, search for whether the driver has an open 40, but not whether he and his suspicious passengers are in our country illegally. And, again, without making the cynical assumption that there is a base political motivation at heart, I can't, for the life of me, figure out why.