Real Change News | Crackdown could increase crime, say opponents

June 9, 2010
Vol: 17 No: 24

News

Crackdown could increase crime, say opponents

by: Chaitra Sriram

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Arizona’s anti-immigration bill is going to backfire and lead to more crime and instability in communities, not less, according to members of a panel discussion convened last week.

The Latino Bar Association of Washington invited a panel of experts on these issues, including Thomas A. Saenz, president and general council of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) to speak against the bill last Wednesday, June 2. The purpose was to explain some of the legal consequences that may arise if it is enforced. The discussion was moderated by Dan Ford of the Latino Bar Association of Washington.

Other panelists were Jorge Barón, Director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project; Luis Fraga, a professor at the University of Washington; Pramila Jayapal, director of OneAmerica; Shankar Narayan from the ACLU; and Rebecca Smith, of the National Employment Law Project.

The bill has sparked heated debate throughout the country about fundamental questions of constitutionality, family values and racial profiling. According to section 1 of the bill, its provisions have been created to “work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States.”

The panelists took issue with the hindrances the bill would place on employment and businesses and voiced even greater concerns about the abuse of workers by employers.

“We know that there are widespread labor law violations,” Smith said. “Employers have many more opportunities to take advantage of workers’ immigration status. What that means is more abuse of immigrant workers, more labor organizing campaigns that go bad because workers have been turned in or have been threatened to be turned in, and more workers being forced into an underground economy.”

A number of panelists insisted that the bill would increase crime rates and make many communities less safe. “It [racial profiling] has this paradoxical effect of harming public safety,” Narayan said. “It really destroys the threads of trust that exist between community members and the law-enforcement agencies that serve those communities and are there to protect them.”

Other issues raised included gang violence, widespread implications for federal law enforcement, and other community and family issues. Racial profiling in connection with gang violence was described as not only unjust, but also detrimental to eradicating gang activity. The panelists also raised the point that mistrust and fear between immigrants and law enforcement officers would hinder investigations, impacting the whole community regardless of immigration status.

“We absolutely have a constitutional crisis in this country; we also have a moral crisis,” Jayapal said. “I don’t believe the immigration debate is actually about immigration. It’s actually about who we want to be as a country and what we want to stand up for. That’s the fight that we’re really fighting.”

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