Posted Feb 23, 2012, 12:13 am
Strong family ties, the cost of returning to their native countries and fewer economic opportunities back home have kept illegal immigrants in the U.S., despite strict immigration laws here, a new report claims.
The report, released Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, said tough laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 do not prompt illegal immigrants to “self-deport.” Instead, those people either stay where they are, but “in the shadows,” or they move to neighboring cities, counties or states, it said.
“There is really no evidence to show that people go back to Mexico when their states or localities pass anti-immigration laws,” said Leah Muse-Orlinoff, a doctoral student at the University of California-San Diego and the author of the report. “In the most extreme cases, they move to another jurisdiction.”
But Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who co-authored SB 1070 and a similar law passed last year in Alabama, questioned findings of the report, “Staying Put but Still in the Shadows.”
“It’s a shoddy report because they haven’t considered all the evidence,” Kobach said.
He pointed to lawmakers in the Mexican state of Sonora who expressed concern about illegal immigrants returning home and being jobless after Arizona’s E-Verify law took effect in 2008. That law requires employers to check the immigration status of any prospective employee.
“When Mexican public officials are telling us that illegal aliens are self-deporting, we should take that information and consider it as true,” he said.
Muse-Orlinoff said fewer immigrants are coming in to the country now because of increased border security, coupled with higher costs of crossing and less economic opportunity in the U.S. But those who are already here are staying put because the “mental arithmetic” of leaving doesn’t add up, she said.
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She called the policy of “attrition through enforcement” irrational and said that laws like SB 1070, Arizona’s omnibus immigration law, make policing more difficult.
“The biggest detriment by far with these state and local laws is that it creates tremendous distrust and fear between migrant communities and law enforcement,” Muse-Orlinoff said.
Muse-Orlinoff’s report is based primarily on surveys and interviews conducted in Oklahoma City between 2009 and 2010. Oklahoma passed laws cracking down on illegal immigration in 2007 and 2009, before Arizona passed SB 1070 in April 2010.
Lt. Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City Police Department said the laws passed in his state made Hispanics afraid to call authorities when violent crimes were committed, because they feared deportation. He said criminals now target the Hispanic community because people there were thought to be less likely to report the crime.
“We’ll never have the numbers of people who didn’t call,” Balderrama said. “It doesn’t benefit anyone for Hispanics to not call the police . . . the fact is those crimes are going to spread.”
Kobach agreed with at least part of the report, that illegal immigrants do sometimes relocate to states with lesser immigration laws, and suggested that some in Arizona may have moved to California.
But he said there are no numbers suggesting immigrants do not also return to their home countries, especially in a border state like Arizona.
“An illegal alien in Oklahoma can self-deport to Kansas . . . which is currently very hospitable to illegal aliens,” said Kobach. “It’s a different dynamic in each state, so it’s really hard to extrapolate.”
Latest comments on this storyRead all 5 »
@janamg
cooperation is a two-way street. I think the feds have made it very clear that they’re not willing to do their part. They’ve beefed up the border a little bit, but by their own admission they’re not worried about the ones already here.
If someone spray-painted graffiti on your house, do you just let it sit there? Do you say to yourself “I didn’t put it there, so I’m not going to clean it up and it can just stay there”? Do you worry about offending the tagger that vandalized your house? Applying your logic to this analogy, it appears as if you would. But, I wouldn’t.
We have a mess here, and it needs to be cleaned up. It’s on the feds to clean it up, sure. But if they won’t clean it up, then we’re left with a choice to either let the mess just stay there or clean it up ourselves. I prefer the latter.
I don’t believe that SB1070 is an immigration law, because it doesn’t address how someone would legally immigrate to the great nation of Arizona. It is not a national law, and because only national law covers immigration, it simply cannot be an immigration law. Although the additional title could be cause for some confusion. ARTICLE 8. ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS. Other people may think that it is an immigration law because it affects immigrants by requiring documentation. I can understand that.
It certainly fits within the definition of omnibus, because it is all over the place discussing traffic violations to employer rules.
Now, is it good law? Well, no. It is not, because it doesn’t build upon a working relationship with the entity that is responsible for immigration. The fact that that entity doesn’t want to enforce the law in the same way that people in Arizona do means that this law is unenforceable, which makes it bad law. Bad law causes turmoil and wasted resources, which is not an effective way of achieving a goal.
So, do we roll over? No, but making bad law is a stupid political grandstanding waste of time. We may not like the feds, be unless we decide to become Arizonastan, we need to work with them.
Not only was it called an “immigration law”, but the adjective “omnibus” was thrown in. It wasn’t quoting someone, and this isn’t in the opinion section.
The prosecution rests.