Conservative Supreme Court Justice John Roberts attempted to shift focus from a central theme for many in the discussion on Arizona’s controversial immigration law. SB1070 has been widely criticized by human rights and civil liberties groups for tacitly approving of racial profiling since Arizona’s police and state troopers will be able to ask for documentation from any person they stop for any violation. Because of the number of undocumented workers in Arizona that are of Hispanic or Latino origin, the thinking is that only those who “look” to be from nearby Mexico or another Latin-American country will be asked to produce paperwork proving they are citizens.
When Justice Roberts cut off the Solicitor General’s opening statement and stated that profiling would not be considered an issue, the die was cast for the Conservative justices to simply step over and around the most potentially explosive elements of the bill. Justice Roberts and the Conservative judges, though, are doing the American people a huge disservice. That disservice is in circumventing a very important civil liberty granted to all people within our borders: due process.
Whether or not the bill simply enforces Federal laws on the book is not really up for debate, as much of the bill does in fact simply mirror existing Federal law. However, one has to ask themselves if immigrants from Mexico looked like an average Caucasian citizen, if proponents of the bill would still defend the bill and deny the racial aspects of it. What happens the first time a legal U.S. citizen is stopped in Arizona, asked for proof of citizenship and a glitch in the national database makes it look like that person is here illegally?
Race is a very important and driving issue in this bill. The point should have been made that this bill actually violates the spirit of the Constitution. Contrary to some opponents’ position, the Constitution’s freedoms and rights do not just apply to citizens of the United States, because the Constitution is actually a set of rules for the Federal Government to follow. That is to say that unless specifically stated, the Constitution does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens.
Since due process is not a right that is specifically given to citizens of the United States only, any law that seeks to circumvent that due process violates the Constitution, as it infringes on a basic human right. Some will argue that Arizona state police will only be able to arrest suspected illegal immigrants if police believe they’ve committed a crime, but as anyone who’s ever been arrested on “probable cause” only to be released when it turns out the police got it wrong can tell you, probable cause is just as open to human error of interpretation as anything else.
The bottom line is that there are a number of things that just don’t add up about Arizona’s SB1070. To ignore the racial profiling aspect is dangerous, especially considering the growing Hispanic and Latino population, here legally, either as naturalized citizens, or citizens by birth. Due process is one of the founding tenets of this country, and when to rob any group, whether they are citizens or not, of this right is to pull out one of the pillars on which our government sits. Bill’s like Arizona’s SB1070 and the so-called “Patriot Act” serve to subvert due process, making everyone arrested presumed guilty until innocence is proved, and not the other way around, as the Constitution declares it should be.
