Stage 6 - Classmate's Blog Critique

I chose to do a critique on Caitlin’s “Summer Government Blog – CEM.” In stage five of her blog, she posts a blog defending Arizona’s right to impose its new immigration law, SB 1070, with all of its provisions, including the ones struck down by president Obama and by Susan Bolton. She points out that illegal immigrants take jobs from American citizens and don’t pay taxes, which means that they are not giving anything back to the government from which they are taking much needed employment opportunities. Also, she states that the laws in the U.S., regarding school registration in particular, are, in some aspects, stricter for U.S. citizens than they are for illegal immigrants. Caitlin supports Arizona’s right to impose the SB 1070 law in order to be able to tell which immigrants are illegal and should not be in the country. The audience for this blog is the citizens of the U.S. concerned with the nation’s immigration policies and laws.

I can see why one would be upset about illegal immigration. The statements Caitlin made defending Arizona’s right to impose the law are true, but I don’t think this law is the way to go about handling the issue of illegal immigration. The SB 1070 law asks police officials to use racial profiling as a way to identify those who they believe could be illegal immigrants. In doing so, not only will the police officers be using race as a means of imposing the law, but they will be targeting one race in particular – Hispanics. The truth of the matter is that illegal immigrants come from many countries, not only from South America, but from Europe and Asia as well. The new immigration law in Arizona would regress from the progress the U.S. made in the Civil Rights movement in attempting to remove assumptions made about a person based on their race. When immigrants carry their immigration papers to show that they are legitimate residents of the U.S., should we be making those immigrants who have recently received their citizenship carry their citizenship papers as proof? If they don’t, how will they show that they are legal citizens now, and not illegal immigrants? After all, their appearance will not have changed, and they could still be questioned about their immigration status under the new law.

Caitlin is right that illegal immigrants are taking American jobs, but the jobs they are taking are usually not the most pleasant ones the U.S. has to offer. Many Americans, though unemployed, may be unwilling to work in the conditions under which illegal immigrants work.

I’m not saying that the issue of illegal immigration should not be addressed, it most certainly should, but I think that the new law in Arizona is simply is not the way to go about it.