Sen. Russell Pearce and the Arizona Republicans have clearly succumbed to heatstroke.I’ve been in support of them recently - for their SB 1070 legislation that makes carrying legal identification mandatory, and gives police the power to demand the papers of anybody they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.
[I support it because that’s how things roll over in Europe. What liberals claim is akin to ‘fascism’ is actually an accepted part of living in so-called ‘progressive’ European countries.]
Some liberal-minded idiots have claimed it’s ‘racial profiling’ but that’s only because the profile of illegal immigrants in Arizona is almost universally Hispanic. If exactly the same law was enacted in New York, suspects would include teeming hordes of Irishmen, Israelis and Russians as well – so it wouldn’t be profiling at all. The law is colorblind – the criminals aren’t.
Yet while I support Arizona’s SB 1070, a new bill being forwarded has really disappointed me.
This new bill would take the clampdown on illegals one step further – by preventing the state from issuing birth certificates to children born in Arizona if their parents are illegal immigrants. The right-wing claim these ‘anchor babies’ – who are American citizens by right of being born in this country – are 'tool' illegals cynically use to establish legal ties to America that prevent their deportation.
Pearce may have a point – and like with the bill that required citizens to carry paperwork, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Just about every western country has already changed their laws so that kids of foreign parents don’t automatically become citizens purely on the virtue of being born there.
But America stands apart – because the decision to award citizenship to every child born on American soil is enshrined in our most sacred document: The Constitution.
The 14th Amendment states that:
"all persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."In short, Arizona doesn’t have the right to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. Sen. Pearce is proposing a law that’s so blatantly unconstitutional I have to wonder exactly what he was smoking when he imagined – even for a second – that he could get away with it!
Of course, he might get away with it. That’s the inevitable situation with State vs. Federal law. It will take a supreme court decision to establish that the law legally can’t be enforced – a process that could take years.
That’s presumably why Sen. Pearce proposed this bill – since I can’t imagine for a second that he was unaware just how unconstitutional it is. He’s playing the system and I don’t like it one goddamn bit. It’s unscrupulous and cheap.
I can’t stand hypocrisy, you see – and when it comes to screwing around with the Constitution, that’s exactly what the Arizona Republicans are guilty of.
These are the guys who claim to vehemently defend the Constitution – or, at least, the right not just to own guns, but to swagger around the state with them strapped to their thighs. Yet when it comes to getting their own way, they’re just as eager to toss aside the sacred document as the Democrats always seem to be.
[A similar example of this Constitutional hypocrisy is Sarah Palin, who claims the Constitution is a sacred document, but nevertheless wants to add a specific clause banning same-sex marriage to it.]
Seriously, you can either stand by the belief that the Constitution is a ‘living document’ that you can edit and alter (in which case, Democrats are good to go on repealing the Second Amendment and whatever else they want to toss in) or you can stick with the belief that the Constitution is good enough as it is – which is what I personally believe (and the Republicans ‘claim’ to.)
[After all, the US Constitution has lasted essentially unchanged for longer than the constitution of every other country in the world – combined.]
The fact that Sen. Pearce is one of those same right-wing windbags who ‘defend’ the Constitution every time they rail against the Obama administration, it’s absolutely unconscionable for him to propose a law that actually violates it.
