Workfare, Not Welfare, Immigration Solution

by Chuck McGlawn 12/18/2011

Let me make it clear I believe Arizona and Alabama can pass and enforce almost any anti-immigration law that their citizens want. And I said so in Nine States & The Liberty ViewsLetter Backs Arizona on Immigration I think Arizona’s SB 1070 law could have provided Arizona and most other States an important lesson in Cause and Effect, leading to more workable Immigration Laws as I stated in Immigration Cause & Effect May be Rearing its Head. That lesson was short-circuited by the State Supreme Court that nullified its most egregious sections. However, no State law should empower authorities to abuse violators of that law. And it should not create a culture of corruption, that turns its head when citizens of a certain color or language are swept up in zeal to rid the State of illegals.

States Have a Right to be Wrong But, Not Criminal

In a recent article entitled, U.S. Finds Pervasive Bias against Latinos by Arizona Sheriff, lovingly called Sheriff Joe, the poster boy of anti-immigration get a deserving slap on the wrist. In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain. That is how bigotry works. You use your power and authority to arrest and detain the TARGET, then you harass anyone who complains.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which Mr. Arpaio leads, had “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that “reaches the highest levels of the agency.” The department interfered with the inquiry, the government said, prompting a lawsuit that eventually led Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.

 [M]ore than 400 inmates, deputies and others had been interviewed as part of the review, including Sheriff Arpaio and his command staff. Mr. Perez said the inquiry, which included jail visits and reviews of thousands of pages of internal documents, raised the question of whether Latinos were receiving “second-class policing services” in Maricopa County. A separate federal grand jury investigation of Sheriff Arpaio’s office is continuing, focusing on accusations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption squad.

Sheriff Arpaio was singled out for criticism in the report, which said that he had used racially charged letters he had received to justify raids and that he helped nurture the department’s “culture of bias.”Asked at a news conference about Sheriff Arpaio’s role in the department’s problems, Mr. Perez said, “We have to do cultural change and culture change starts with people at the top.”

Predictions of abuse of Arizona’s SB-1079 materialized as, “The inquiry’s findings paint a picture of a department staffed by poorly trained deputies who target Latino drivers on the roadways and detain innocent Latinos in the community in their searches for illegal immigrants. The mistreatment, the government said, extends to the jails the department oversees, where Latino inmates who do not speak English are mistreated.”

I personally favor a States right to limit immigration in any manor the people of the State choose. However, “The absence of clear policies and procedures to ensure effective and constitutional policing, along with the deviations from widely accepted policing and correctional practices, and the failure to implement meaningful oversight and accountability structures, have contributed to a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.” Civil libertarians that warned of violations of Civil Rights were right, as “…Latino drivers were four to nine times more likely to be stopped… than non-Latino drivers, …called the most egregious racial profiling seen in this country,

The report also suggested that Sheriff Arpaio’s well-publicized raids aimed at arresting illegal immigrants were sometimes prompted by complaints that described no criminal activity but referred to people with “dark skin” or to Spanish speakers congregating in an area. “The use of these types of bias-infected indicators as a basis for conducting enforcement activity contributes to the high number of stops and detentions lacking in legal justification,” the report said.

It is no secret that I favor immigration, and, I favor liberty. And I look forward to the day when the second of those two statements is a redundancy. I believe immigration will always produce a gain to the area that the immigrants decide to settle. That is, unless WE THE PEOPLE through coercive laws offer up a smorgasbord of services to immigrants that they find it unnecessary to apply their full efforts to providing for their family and providing for their future.

Workfare Not Welfare

It is the Welfare State that attracts the undesirable immigrants. When you place huge billboards on the border that say, “FREE EDUCATION”, “FREE MEDICAL CARE” “FREE HOUSING”, and “FREE FOOD” What would you expect from immigrants who are willing to pay a coyote three or four thousand dollars for passage into the land of plenty?  Our current Immigration and Welfare Laws are a formula for the anti-immigration sentiment that empowers the Sheriff Joes of the US. Incidently, those signs are painted on both sides. And they have played a major roll in turning hard working Americans into the handout seekers that leave gapping holes in our unskilled labor force that invites in the illegals

The Workfare State (if we only had one) would attract only immigrants who want a chance to offer their marketable services in a competitive environment. I made this clear in A philosophical Libertarian on Immigration where we posed the question, “What harm does Juan do when he comes to the US and takes a job?” Additionally we asked, “What is it that makes a rat-trap anything other than just a piece of wood and some wire?” The answer is the cheese. If we take away the cheese, we stop attracting RATS. As for Mexicans who have marketable skills, like the ability to repair refrigerators, or transmissions, or can build fences, lay brick, or even mow and make our yards look better, and can save us money in the process, money that we go out and spend on other things that create other jobs, then I say welcome neighbor.

In a Workfare State, everyone benefits. Americans that leave jobs that they want done, undone because they value the money it would cost if the jobs were done by domestic labor. However, immigrants want the money the Americans are willing to pay to get those jobs done, more than they want the time it takes to do the jobs.

The seeds of a workable immigration policy are found in these observations. We just need more lookers. Invite others to look