LatinaLista — Word came this afternoon that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with the ruling of a lower court judge that some parts of Arizona’s SB1070 bill just should not be enacted into law.
The suit was brought by the U.S. Justice Dept. against the state of Arizona. Barely had the U.S. Court of Appeals issued their ruling than Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne vowed to continue the fight.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and state’s Attorney General Tom Horne
What exactly are they fighting for?
They’re fighting to:
Let police officers make people prove their citizenship if after stopping them the officers think those people are in the country illegally.
It can be based on how they dress, how dark their skin is, if they speak with an accent or whatever the whim of the officer may be on that day at that time. While there are many good officers, there are enough bad officers out in the field that such a subjective measure leaves itself wide open for abuse by those officers with an agenda.
To make it a crime of failure “to apply for or carry ‘alien-registration papers’.”
What happens to those people who are stopped while doing activities that shouldn’t require them to carry any kind of proof of ID, like jogging or bicycling in their neighborhoods?
To allow law enforcement to arrest someone without a warrant for simply believing they’ve committed a public offense that makes them removable from the U.S.
The U.S. justice system is notorious for not getting the real criminals all the time or creating scenarios that fit their agenda. Sometimes, the victims get vindicated but with an undocumented immigrant there is no vindication allowed. Even if that immigrant didn’t commit the crime, he or she would have been deported before any line of defense could be made.
To make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work.
It is a legal way to starve people to death and it’s a human rights abuse whether it happens south of the border or north of the border.
Though some time has passed since the passing of SB1070, reading over the parts of the bill that the judges refused to endorse, now more than ever, clearly show Arizona not as a state trying to get a handle on illegal immigration, but creating a terror state of their own for anyone who looks Latino.
Gov. Brewer and Attorney General Horne issued a joint statement that reads in part: “…the Ninth Circuit Court is the most overturned appeals court in the nation for a reason.”
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals showed judicial and humanitarian wisdom in their decision today. It can only be hoped that that kind of wisdom applies all the way to the Supreme Court.
