SOME TIME in the next two weeks the Obama administration is likely to get the injunction it requested this week to put a stay on the anti-immigration law passed in Arizona in April, which it says usurps the powers reserved for the federal government under the US constitution.
The Arizona law, which, among other things, would enable citizens to sue police officers if they failed to check the papers of suspected “illegal aliens”, is the strongest example so far of states and localities taking the law into their own hands. They cite Washington’s failure to fix the broken system, which has allowed in an estimated 11 million undocumented workers, mostly from Mexico.
Should the department of justice fail to get the stay it wants on a law that critics say would licence “racial profiling” by Arizona’s police, the US could see a mushrooming of similar laws across the country.
Perhaps the best known case is in northern Virginia’s prosperous Prince William County, which passed a resolution in 2007 mandating police officers to check the papers of anyone they arrested.
The move, watered down in a tense vote after critics argued that it made law-abiding Hispanic workers scapegoats, showed how combustible the issue can be locally. The controversy also drew out simmering tensions between populist local politicians and their often overworked counterparts in the police.
“A few months after it passed, Prince William was the only county in northern Virginia where Republicans held on to office,” says Corey Stewart, chairman of the county’s board of supervisors. “We have seen violent crime fall by 37 per cent since passing the resolution.”
But it was only by torturing the statistics that Mr Stewart got them to confess. According to Charlie Deane, chief of police, the suburban county arrested 1,150 illegal immigrants in 2009 – the only full year where numbers are available. Of these arrests the overwhelming majority were for traffic offences. Of the 12 murders that took place in the county, none was carried out by illegal immigrants.
Mr Deane’s statistics bear out national surveys that show crime tends to be lower in areas where illegal immigrants are concentrated. But in a climate where the bumper stickers blame immigrants for almost any problem, the police chief has had a hard time putting forward the unvarnished data. “Illegal immigration is a complex, emotional and polarising issue,” he says. “Our communities need thoughtful analysis of the facts, versus sound bites.”
Politicians seem unlikely to oblige. Because of fears they will be thrown out by party activists, previously sympathetic Republicans, such as John McCain, who is battling to hold on to his party’s Senate nomination in Arizona, have abandoned support for comprehensive immigration reform.
Reformers are hoping Mr McCain will revert to his previous stance should he be re-elected in November. They cite the example of Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, who is running as the Republican nominee for the governorship of California.
During the battle for her party’s nomination, Ms Whitman praised the Arizona law.
Having won her party’s nomination, Ms Whitman this week issued Spanish-language advertisements and billboards attacking the Arizona law and painting herself as a friend of Hispanics, who are America’s fastest growing electoral group. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)