Aretae

The virtue of excellence

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Minorities

Which is more anti-minority? 

(A) Arizona's law making it illegal to be an illegal immigrant?

(B) Portland or assorted rich coastal California towns using land use regulations to make absolutely certain that no poor people (read Non-Asian Minorities) with families can live anywhere nearby.

IMO, (B) is substantially more anti-minority, and substantially more hypocritical. 

However, (A) is far more expansive of government power, and one of the most anti-libertarian things passed in a long time.  It's the wedge in the door to National ID cards.  Net worse for liberty than Obamacare, if only because Obamacare only marginally increases the socialism in US Medical care from 80% to 85%, while Arizona immigration law is a whole new category of intrusion.
Posted by Aretae at

3 comments:

Devin said...

Other people - including illegal immigrants - can infringe upon one's liberty. Infringing upon liberty is not just the province of centralized states.

Read this comment by a woman from Arizona.

Now I don't live in Arizona, and have not been following the illegal immigration problem there closely. So I cannot state my own opinion about whether this was a proper trade off of freedom from the state for freedom to walk around without getting mugged. But a large majority of Arizonans believe in the bill, so why not give them the benefit of the doubt? What do you know about the Arizona illegal immigrant problem that they do not?

April 29, 2010 10:18 PM
Aretae said...

Devin,

1. I think your comment is orthogonal to my post.

2. I wouldn't expect you to be one extolling the virtues of the demos.

April 29, 2010 10:54 PM
Mark Horning said...

The AZ law was very carefully written.

1) It makes illegal under AZ law exactly what is already illegal in all 50 states and the territories and district. They copied the language verbatim from the existing federal statute.

The only legal difference is that now an AZ Post certified officer can enforce the law under AZ statute, instead of needing a federal officer to enforce it under federal statute.

No different than charging someone with counterfeiting under AZ law as opposed to federal law.

If you have a problem with that, the problem is with the Federal statute that has been on the books since 1940.

2) The requirement for "reasonable suspicion" is the same language as set forth by the SCOTUS in Terry v. Ohio. (also see Hibbel v. Nevada)

If the cops have reasonable suspicion that you have broken a law, they can detain you until you identify yourself. (Terry Stop)

They already have this power under Supreme court precedent. Again, the problem is nto with the law, it's with Terry v. Ohio.

Rather long musings on Libertarian (and other) views on illegal immigration here:

http://rocketsong.blogspot.com/2010/04/musings-on-immigration.html

April 30, 2010 12:05 AM

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