No search warrants are needed..once sb1070 passes the system will take care of itself. Police encounter illegals on a daily basis with no identification whatsoever and don't speak english. There will be some that stay in the shadows under the radar and that is fine but having the law in place sets precedence to what is tolerated here.
Which is great if you don't have a problem with allowing police to arrest people on the grounds that they merely look like they may have broken the law. SB1070 lowers the arrest threshold from 'probable cause' to 'reasonable suspicion'. This is not something to be taken lightly, and this is a dangerous precedent to set, especially when criteria the police are going to use in determining to ask for legal status are vague and ambiguous.
"That's fine", you say, "if they're legal citizens or they have their paperwork they have nothing to worry about." Which is indeed true, until they try to apply that same threshold and criteria to other crimes. Let's say you're driving an old SUV in a sketchy neighborhood, get pulled over and the cop thinks you're acting nervous. Maybe you look like the "druggie" type (not unlikely if you work fleet for US). Congratulations: you're reasonably suspected of trafficking or buying drugs, now it's just a matter of detaining you until you can prove this isn't the case. That sucks, but, drugs really are a Big Problem and we really have to take Strong Measures to Get Tough on people that traffic and sell them. Maybe you're of Middle Eastern descent and look "radicalized". Maybe you fit the "reasonable suspicion" profile of a rapist, child molester, terrorist or kidnapper. Reasonable suspicion of guilt until proven innocent. This crappy system of suspicion might work well for the TSA but not for our police.
SB1070 isn't going to solve anything because once the courts have ripped its teeth out there's not going to be much left to it anyway.
Arizona does not need 600,000 illegals to pick tomatoes or whatever on a seasonal basis. There will always be no shortage for unskilled labor for the general public to perform at a wage the market sets. Its been noted that since human history no country has survived without securing it's borders.
Then how many illegals does Arizona need? Maybe it was market that attracted those people here in the first place.
I contend that in all of human history there have been exactly ZERO nations that have had entirely 100% secured borders, and when the borders have been secured, they were mainly to protect against military incursions and not population migrations. Migrant populations have been crossing borders for centuries as if they weren't even there. The Romani (Gypsies) had spread to every corner of Europe by the 17th century and are a minority in most European countries to this day. So it depends on what you mean by "secured" borders. Guarded borders or hermetically sealed borders? The borders of all nations through nearly all of history have been porous. It's only when there's a sharp contrast in wealth and living conditions along the same border that that becomes a serious problem.
And then what exactly are you going to do to secure the border completely? A fence will work great, until it's scaled or cut through. How about one big wall, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific? But walls can be tunneled under, so we'll have to make sure that wall's footers to go pretty deep, and that's going to take a lot of concrete. Plus it's going to need maintenance, and we'll need a lot of Border Patrol agents to constantly go up and down it, which means more Humvee's ATV's and helicopters. Sounds pretty expensive so far...and now we have unmanned drones buzzing around over U.S. and Mexican territory, and cameras, and sensors and all kinds of neat toys from Boeing's defense division. Do we really need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars committing to a concept of "border security" that's going to militarize domestic territory and allow the installation, use, and perfection of surveillance and spy equipment that can be all too easily adapted for use in law enforcement activities that have nothing to do with the border or immigration...just to keep out people looking for work or escaping the violent narco-civil warring hell-hole country that American demand for narcotics has turned it into?
Just remember that all the walls and fences you build to keep others out can just as easily be used to keep you in. Freedom isn't free. One of its costs is that there are those that are going to abuse it to the detriment of others. So be it. So long as we have the rights to assemble, barter, and travel freely, some people are going to use those rights to conduct illegal business. That's just a sad fact of human nature. We can either reform our immigration system so that we can live with this reality as best we can or we can sacrifice those rights to our fear and anger of the alien population and run into the arms of a police state mentality.
Most nations and civilizations in history including the United States rose to power or have maintained it with the servitude and/or exploitation of often imported or subdued weaker social groups, whether they be migrants or slaves or serfs to do the hard and dirty work when it needed to be done. That there are this many illegal immigrants here is not some kind of historical aberration or anomaly, it's pretty on par with the greater nations in human history.
Anyways and as such this again is why I support Mr. Parker's having signed said letter (in order to justify this post as being on topic wink wink). Long reply is long.
