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Arizona, were jobs roam free XD
14 years ago
I've been finding this funny enough to want to make a journal about it.
About a year ago, Arizona State passed a series of laws that allowed it to take it's illegal immigrant situation into it's own hands because the US govt wasn't lifting a finger. It was a major problem here. The vast majority of the cities crimes were done by illegals. But the point of this journal is the illegally "employed" immigrants. These have always been a MAJOR problem here, and when the economy took a dive, it became even more severe.
About a third of the country was "outraged" by our state doing exactly what the US govt was supposed to be doing the entire time =p Especially California who tried to boycott all business with AZ state until we told them we would stop giving them our power, where Cali get's over a third of there power from. Cali quickly dropped it's boycott lol. Dumbasses. And now to run salt in those pissy states wounds, AZ has help wanted signs ALL OVER THE PLACE! We're one of the only states where it isn't hard to find a job if your not a lazy retard XD
So funny how AZ's economy is growing while the majority of the nations states are failing, all due to the very thing some of these states through a hissy fit about, lol!
About a year ago, Arizona State passed a series of laws that allowed it to take it's illegal immigrant situation into it's own hands because the US govt wasn't lifting a finger. It was a major problem here. The vast majority of the cities crimes were done by illegals. But the point of this journal is the illegally "employed" immigrants. These have always been a MAJOR problem here, and when the economy took a dive, it became even more severe.
About a third of the country was "outraged" by our state doing exactly what the US govt was supposed to be doing the entire time =p Especially California who tried to boycott all business with AZ state until we told them we would stop giving them our power, where Cali get's over a third of there power from. Cali quickly dropped it's boycott lol. Dumbasses. And now to run salt in those pissy states wounds, AZ has help wanted signs ALL OVER THE PLACE! We're one of the only states where it isn't hard to find a job if your not a lazy retard XD
So funny how AZ's economy is growing while the majority of the nations states are failing, all due to the very thing some of these states through a hissy fit about, lol!
After Cali I zipped back to the midwest (Iowa) and, coincidentally, immediately hopped onto a Super Walmart here myself. While certainly not high-paying, it got me by and was a pretty good job 'till i moved on six months later with a better hire. :3 I got hella exercize pushing carts all day through heat and then snow, too. lol. Overnight stocker's a better position than day courtesy though!
I do think the US's immigration laws are way out of wack. It requires a ton of shit that make no sense, and doesn't require stuff it should, such as speaking english =p The US in general is sadly full of idiots and it's the idiots that make the biggest public stink and eventually, make the rules and pointless laws or lack there of. The US is the -only- country in the world that doesn't have an official language. Completely ridiculous.
The media is horribly bias and corrupt with stuff like this. Just as they made it seem like the majority of the country was against AZ on this, when really only 14 states were against AZ on there decision =p And since AZ proved this move to be a good idea, other states have already started doing the same thing.
I've often considered moving back out to AZ >.>;
I responded in more detail to a comment above about the law specifically in AZ
If California was negatively affected by illegal immigration I'm sure it would have a bigger stance on it. But unlike AZ we have 4 major metropolitan areas where all the illegals go to, and unlike Texas we only share a very small border with Mexico. The state actually benefits from it far more than is hurt by it.
What I disagree with are the methods that encourage racial profiling. Requiring people to carry proof of citizenship or their green card is one thing, but only requiring hispanics to do so is another.
But yes, the laws for business's have helped open up the job market big time. If a business is found hiring illegals, they can have there business license pulled from the entire state =D
I would say they're too powerful.
They're good when they can negotiate better working conditions.
They're bad when they can force massive entire-industry unionizations and harass anyone who doesn't join.
I still believe they're overpowered though.
I've seen this all first hand too. My dad was in the firefighter union in Wisconsin. I saw the kind of BS crap they do. The government unions are the WORST, but private sector unions are almost as bad, look at the crap with Boeing right now.
I believe that unions shouldn't be able to /force/ anything. They can organize, collect dues, etc, but they shouldn't be able to force people to join, and they shouldn't be able to force a strike to succeed (if the employer fires them all and hires replacements, those replacements shouldn't have to worry about getting beat up either.)
It's like, unions are a good idea taken too far. Too much water will kill a man, and a union with too much power can kill a business.
Oops.. boycott fail. We actually benefited from it.
And all these claims of racial profiling are all wishy washy. There's no way to prove that cops are being intentionally racist (well unless they are beating them yelling racial slurs...). The fact that more Mexicans/Hispanics might be affected by this law is merely because Arizona shares a border with Mexico, not Canada or France or Japan. I'm actually more concerned for the cops who would of had to enforce this law... since they have a tendency of getting SHOT when pulling over illegal immigrants. I guess you have to live here to truly understand... we're not racist, or anti immigrant - we are just trying to protect ourselves. I'm sure there are good immigrants that come here illegally - and we need to make it easier for them to come here. However, we need to make it HARDER for drug cartels, kid nappers and criminals to cross our border. Phoenix isn't the kidnapping capital of the United States by coincidence... and it's also no coincidence that it's also 2nd in the world... only after Mexico City.
In other words... we want the good immigrants... the ones that'll make our country better with their innovative ideas and/or strong work ethic. We don't want to cop murdering, drug smuggling, child raping trash that's been allowed to get in as a result of people trying to be PC about it.
As is every state. XD
Texas and Arizona could resolve their arguments with the Federal Government and get everything they want without even ever having to take it public. That's what I dislike: They take it public with all this bickering, but they don't need to. Why do they need the attention?
Just use the same caveat California did: Federal laws are a minimum standard, ergo states may individually enforce stricter laws as they deem fit.
I retract my statement on the whole 'public' thing. :3
1. Some people were worried about the humanitarian impact. Illegal immigrants holding jobs = people trying to feed their families.
That was an issue among the people who protested it: Is it fair to punish someone because they got screwed at the paperwork office or didn't have time to wait? Most illegals, after all, don't enter the US illegally. They overstay their work visas. The desert-crossers you hear about are usually just the most desperate or least intelligent of the lot.
Anyways, the people who use this reason are the ones who launched the boycotts.
2. Arizona politicians and political activists themselves didn't help Arizona's case. There were periods where it sounded like another argument about attacking the federal government because it's the hip thing to do among conservatives right now.
If they had said "We are supplementing the federal laws because it is our right to do so, as California has done with it's environmental laws" and left it at that, nobody would have questioned it.
Some people brought up the issue of states rights, particularly the Tea Party. They love the 10th Amendment, which is a spectacular thing for the opposition to latch on to: They were shouting about an Amendment that has had a caveat (The Necessary and Proper clause, which was supported by the Supreme Court as early as the 1790s, meaning even the Founding Fathers were putting holes in that amendment) and then they wouldn't even specify which right was in question.
Arizona, at least from what the coverage here talked about, never invoked (publically) the state right that would have immediately shut the opposition down:
It is the duty of every state to enforce federal laws as a minimum standard. Every state has the right to further enact stricter laws than the federal ones, so long as it is subject to judicial review and the occasional tinkering. It's why California has stronger environmental regulations than any other state, for example.
Instead, you had people yammering on about rights, but they never stopped the yammering long enough to put that thought together. It's like when you have kids arguing: They yell and yell and claim this and that and the other thing, but until they actually shut up and tell you what's going on in a calm, collected manner...well then you never know what they're going on about.
Oh, and also the fact a few people did make secessionist, reactionary, or otherwise inflammatory remarks that really rubbed a large number of Unionists the wrong way (yes, Unionists still exist, and will as long as people keep throwing around the word secession).
I personally opposed it merely because of the tone of the activists supporting it. I kept thinking "Come on, there's no reason to be all hostile about it. Say you're supplementing federal law like California and that'll sort it all out! There's no reason to return to the 1850s here."
This is [also] why I generally oppose the Tea Party, but could talk with their legal advisors: The Tea Party itself yammers about their message and focuses on talking points. You can never argue with them because if they shout it loud enough, it must be true.
Their legal advisors, on the other hand, could talk with me with a level head and show me precedent and logic, and I could show them precedent and logic, and we could reach a conclusion together that everyone could agree on.
3. And others still oppose it for racial reasons: The law itself is not racist. The cops enforcing it, however, might be racist. That's what they're worried about: What if Deputy Bubba in a backwater of 59 people decides he don't take too kindly to anyone with a skin tone darker than Sepia?
If a cop busted an illegal immigrant who was an illegal immigrant, but the cop used the wrong legitimization and can be found guilty of acting purely on racism, what do you do then? You can't prosecute or punish a person, legal or not, if proper procedure and reasoning wasn't followed. Do you find that illegal immigrant and say "Hey, sorry about that, here's your get out of jail free card"? It's a legal minefield that could have the wrong implications however it's addressed.
IN CONCLUSION:
In the end, the reasons for opposing the law were either humanitarian, concern about racial stuff, or opposition to yammering and trying to find the nugget of logic behind the law. It wasn't really about the economics of it. The boycotts, I suspect, were all launched by the humanitarian-based opposition.
I opposed the law when it was proposed, because I couldn't find the actual arguement. Everyone was all about talking points and yelling at the federal government. I refuse to support anything that is blindly and fanatically defended based on the defense of it by fanatics. I wanted the logic behind such a law.
When the law went to court, the actual logic behind the law became apparent and I quit opposing it. The court case made it clear it was not an attack on the federal government's policies, but merely a supplement. THAT is what they should have made clear in the first place. :3
Sorry for the rant. I hope you got a little insight into why people opposed it.
Again, these laws are no different then the ones the federal govt has stated for it's illegal immigration. AZ just changed the power away from the govt, since they weren't doing there job, and put it on the state level so the state's officers could do the job that was supposed to have been done all along.
And practically any government agency that isn't hunting terrorists has had it's funding and manpower cut drastically because of the Department of Homeland Security. They'll give money to any retired colonel with contacts in South America and take it from the Border Patrol.
If they did actually refuse to enforce the laws in Arizona, I'm sorry. I can't imagine why they wouldn't enforce a law, but I could see several situations where enforcement would be a bad idea.
For example: finding out someone is here illegally outside of proper procedures, since law enforcement officers are supposed to assume you are not guilty until proven guilty, and thus all suspects are assumed to be here legally. If they find out you are an illegal in a situation outside of that with which they could charge a citizen, they can't* do anything to you.
*Actually this is only partially true: It's a legal gray area even now whether inadvertent revelation of illegal status should be treated the same as regular crime or not, and consequently whether the circumstances for proper arrest are the same or not.
How is something being illegal a "grey area"? To me, it's pretty black and white. Legal... illegal. Allowed by law... NOT allowed by law.
By the thinking of this, if someone inadvertently found out you had robbed a bank some time ago, you might not be able to be arrested for it. Or if they found out you had murdered someone. I don't think that if something is illegal and it's found out it should be treated as a grey area in ANY case. At the very least, if you get caught, no matter how it happens, they investigate it, verify it, and if proven true, then it's acted apon.
If a police officer asks to search your shed for marijuana, and they find marijuana in a barrel under a tree in your back yard, they cannot arrest you or even charge you for it. It wasn't in the shed and it wasn't in plain view.
That's the gray area: If they do not find out properly, can they still enforce the law if you aren't a citizen?
If you are a citizen and they do not find out about your crime properly, they cannot enforce the law even if they know you broke it. They have to follow due process, which means ignoring your crime, at least until you commit one they can bust you on.
That's why many crimelords go down for financial stuff: nobody can properly get the details they need to arrest for murder or theft or whatever...but then the crimelord goes and forgets to pay his taxes.
But there hasn't been a real court case to settle once and for all whether the criminal investigation rights of a US citizen apply to everyone in the US or just citizens. That's the gray area.
The US' major issue is the public sector, private sector jobs are increasing at a much larger rate than the public.. only problem is that public sector jobs pay way more, and can actually support a family.
Personally I'm most likely staying right here in Cali for the rest of my life, even though I'd like to move more north into states with actual weather patterns. Though my entire family is here in Cali, so it's unlikely I'll be able to move away from that. AZ isn't ever going to be a work option for me.
My last job was lost due to immigrants. I had three spanish managers, and most of the people who worked there didn't speak english except for the bare minimum. I literally heard the three of them talking about how they had a cousin who would be perfect for my job, while glancing over their shoulder at me. See... they're used to americans not really understanding spanish, but I do, so I was listening in. When they saw me doing it, they stopped talking around me at all. Shortly after on the very day my probationary period was over and I was supposed to be full time, I got fired.
As for the immigrant situation...? Yeah... yeah...
You mean the US government that has been increasing enforcement and deportation?
It was a major problem here. The vast majority of the cities crimes were done by illegals.
And this is simply false, undocumented immigrants actually have lower crime rates than the general population.
Well, sort of. The key thing about "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" is that it based on the assumption that "it happened after, therefore it was caused by", but you got the order wrong: Arizona crime rates started falling while illegal immigration was still going up.
You do know that the crime rate in Arizona has fallen every year since 2002, right? And you also know that the undocumented immigrant population peaked in 2007, right?
Ultimately, I find the argument that they are law abiding irrelevant. The ones that DO obey the law and are hard workers, I am more than willing to accept. It's the ones that aren't like that that I want to be rid of. The only good way to effectively do that is to stop them all from coming to begin with, loosen the immigration requirements enough to let the worthy in. You can't possibly hope to separate and filter though unless you have a wall with a good doorman.
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/C.....atebyState.cfm
(You'll have to call up the data table yourself due to how the site works.)
As for immigration, my earlier number was from a research group. So, I'll give you a more official source: DHS, (they give figures for January of each year and use a different estimation technique, this moves the peak to 2008).
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/.....ll_pe_2010.pdf
(You want Table #4, on page 4.)
Yeah, a lot of people had a problem with the notion of being able to ask for proof of citizenship on whatever pretext a cop feels like coming up with. We all know they can make up reasons to pull you over and I've read articles where they admit as much. My own mate is a Canadian immigrant and she often doesn't bring her wallet with green card. So it would epically suck to have her detained while we proved her residency. Yet neither of us are too worried about that because nobody thinks to check the citizenship of someone who looks white. And therein lies the problem with racial profiling. She could just as easily be an illegal immigrant as any Mexican, but she will almost definitely not be caught by that new law.
Yes, it is a federal law that she must always have her green card on her. But the law is not enforced because it's kind of ridiculous and intrusive to constantly be proving your citizenship. Would any of us want to have to do that? Seriously, think about it. Whether or not kicking out illegals is justified or helpful, there has to be a better way to do it than with a racial profiling papers check. Like maybe go after the businesses that don't check your papers before hiring you (which it sounds like the new law also does and nobody had a problem with that part).
So why all the anger against illegals in the first place? We've had illegal immigrants around for decades and no jobs or crime crisis until recently.
Bad Dragon is a business run solely by Otherkin dragons.
Maybe the pizza joint down the street is a business run solely by Mexicans.
How are they different?
They're both units trying to protect themselves from outsiders and benefit people like themselves. Why do we create these groups? Why are people here pitting Arizona against California? The USA against Mexico? Why do we have to tighten borders and keep all the "bad guys" out of "our" land?
The media is biased? Yes, if you mean the media is a paid tool of the richest 1% of our population. That's the only group the media is biased in favor of. The media creates these controversies to distract us from the real problems.
One real problem is we in the USA use an unsustainable amount of the world's resources. Someone in the world has to be dirt poor because of us. We have no moral right to tell the masses of poor to stay the heck out of "our" land and to stay away from the resources we've plundered. No man deserves riches more than another simply due to inheritance or luck of birthplace.
Another real problem is the US doesn't make anything anymore. We pay the cheapest labor in China to do it and then dump CO2 into the atmosphere to ship it all back over here. This benefits China in the short term, but as soon as they start wanting better wages for more people they'll just move the jobs to the next dirt-poor nation. Then all the people in China who used to be happy as farmers or in some other sustainable profession will not be able to go back. Their land and knowledge will be gone.
The jobs that can't be outsourced to the dirt-poor nations are taken by the dirt-poor illegal immigrants. They're willing to work for less than minimum wage because they have few legal rights here and it's still better than their dirt-poor origins. What does that say about us and about the disparity we've created? Are any of us willing to work for a few bucks an hour and live with a dozen other people in a couple of rooms to save on rent, and not complain about it? Those are the kinds of jobs you're freeing up by kicking out the illegals. Those franchise businesses where they only hire people of their own kind and pay them better are their way of fighting against the income disparity. Maybe some of those decent jobs will go to non-illegals, but they're more likely to go to legal Mexicans than any of "us". Then we'll have to start targeting them, right?
Remove taxes and regulations in Texas and business moves there. But what happens once all that land and oil and natural beauty is gone? It's the Tragedy of the Commons. It works for awhile but in the long run we all suffer the consequences.
Business always moves where there are fewer rules and cheaper wages. Unless you have smart regulations (like Canada's large import tariffs that kept more of their jobs local). Unless you have workers who stick together and demand fairness (yes, evil Unions!). Unless you have a government that actually works for the people and has their best interests at heart. Unless you have people that educate themselves and care for each other and the land and find long term solutions instead of responding with short term fear and isolationism.