For a long time, Arizona has been one of the states facing law enactment crisis. Particularly, the Arizona’s state law has been faced with internal instability and fluctuations in controlling various illegal activities, especially the eminent illegal migration of Mexicans into the state.
As revealed by American Immigration Council (1), various Acts have been developed in the Law system to enhance the improvement of the situation in the state, with an aim of integrating the people and the police force in the maintenance of the state’s laws.
For instance, the “Support Our Laws and Safe Neighborhood Act” referred to as SB 1070 was recently developed and approved by the legislature of the state. It had been noticed that, the high rate of immigrants from the neighboring states has been accompanied by evils like smuggling, trespassing, and alien registration documents among others.
On this basis, there has been significant need to control such activities using the legal system. This paper will present the factors which contributed to the establishment of immigration law reform in Arizona.
According to Good (1), the amendment of HB2162 law on April 29, 2010 in alignment with SB 10170 was meant to incorporate other races, nationality and color of all the people in the state. It is important to note that, the Arizona laws were initially developed with les regard of the future changes the state, resulting into the kind of disequilibrium in the co-existence between the state’s citizens and its neighborhood.
The currently experienced racial profiling in the state has been one of the major rising issues; as the initial laws did not consider other races in the state (Kaye 1). In this regard, HB2162 law was established to define all the terms and specifications of co-existence between the citizens and the other races, especially the immigrants.
The main concern underlying Arizona is whether it has the capacity as a state to enforce its laws effectively without external interventions. The bureaucracy of interpreting the Law and implementing them into policies that are administratively workable policies has been a major issue. The neighboring country of Mexico has also aired its views on the matter.
For instance, the Foreign Ministry has written to the State for reviewing of the Laws but to no avail. In a statement made by the Foreign Ministry of Mexico, it was clear that the establishment of the Arizona Law of Immigration has interrupted the good neighborhood that had been existing between Arizona and Mexico (Kaye 1).
It is even worrying to most citizens of Mexican origin since the law is especially aimed at minimizing their illegal presence in the State. This means that even rightful dwellers of the State might find themselves in the wrong side of the Law.
As revealed by Good (1), the suggested law system has also been found to create divisions among police officers since it has some major management issues.
Many patrol officers as presented by a fragment of Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) want freedom so as to fully enforce federal immigration laws. The other faction is of the idea that checkups should be in place to ensure minimal exuberant crack downs on illegal immigrants (Kaye 2). Divisions in the police unit saw two groups argue publicly about the law.
Supporters claimed that it would give officers more liberty necessary while carrying out their jobs and only little additional training was required. The bill was termed as having just enough teeth to keep off ignoring immigration laws by departments; on the flip side, it explicitly forbade officers from discriminating citizens on racial grounds.
Conclusion
Generally, the State’s Law Legislature furthers the tussle by maintain it is failure of the Federal government to contain the immigrants that has catalyzed the enactment. Although the Law is not different from Federal Law the main debatable part of the whole issue is the enforcement of the Bill. The Law is ineffective or it is not properly enforced in the United State and thus raises questions on whether it should be enforced at the State level and its effectiveness when enforced.
Works Cited
American Immigration Council. How Much Will Arizona’s Immigration Bill (SB1070) Cost? 2010. Web.
Good, Charles. Arizona’s Immigration Law Comes with a Price. 2010. Web.
Kaye, Jackson. Arizona Police Agencies in a State of Confusion over SB 1070. The Huffington Post. 2010. Web.