Perhaps you have heard what Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum wants to get started in Florida, if not you can read here:
This is of course part of a trend started by Arizona with their passing of immigration enforcement laws that allow cops to stop innocent people on the street to ask for proof of citizenship. The fact that this is a growing trend (20 states are trying to follow Arizona's lead) is itself surprising given all the negative feedback they received, including hometown basketball franchise, the Pheonix Suns, having made and worn special jerseys that read "Los Suns" to draw attention to the issue. And of course it further draws attention to the fact that a large part of the "illegal" immigrant community is Latino, and if you're talking about Arizona, you're talking about Mexicans. But if you're talking about Mexicans, then you should also be talking about the fact that Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California were all at one time part of Mexico! So there is a sort of psychology to Mexicans crossing the border that says "this isn't really wrong." And it isn't wrong.
A family friend pointed out to me in conversation that in Europe they have no immigration problem because all European Union members have open borders to other nations of the European Union. If you were born in Poland but suddenly get word that there are jobs aplenty in Madrid, Spain, you can hop on a train and pursue your chances of a better livelihood. Now, we're not talking about complete open borders. I, as an American citizen, can't move to Italy and get a job. And its not without disturbance, such as the 2005 riots in France involving Algerian immigrants. But on the continent of Europe, there is freedom of movement that allows, theoretically, for populations to shift towards regions with the most availability of work. Here we have an example of how to deal with the Mexican border - if you make crossing easier and legal, you eliminate the seedy side of sneaking into the States. Mexico is deeply embroiled in a drug war that could pose a threat to the US should we have a more permeable boundary, or it could provide an opportunity for the US to help get a hand on the problem by giving our law enforcement agencies better access to trouble spots in Mexico. It would also dry up the labor pool for drug cartels since law-abiding folks desperate to get to the US would no longer have to resort to being mules for cartels or paying "coyotes" (smugglers of immigrants) which also further supports criminal power.
Now Florida doesn't have to deal with being adjacent to Mexico, and Mexicans are not the only people immigrating to the US, but it bore thinking out since Arizona has been so pivotal in the debate as of late. The new twist Florida would provide is a 20 day stay in jail for immigrants who were unable to supply official documentation of their status. Our nation already has the highest rate of imprisonment of the industrialized world, our prisons are overcrowded, ineffective and have absurd recidivism. Stuffing more crap down a clogged drain never provides a solution.
I fail to see what is to fear from undocumented immigrants. If I try and look at it from the other perspective, the risks might be considered as follows: immigrants taking jobs from citizens during a recession; immigrants straining social services for which they don't contribute taxes towards; terrorism and increased crime.
I'll take these one at a time. It is true we have high unemployment, but we also have a population that is resistant towards taking certain jobs and we also have an economic system that has created the recession in the first place. Some other time I may provide a more detailed critique of capitalism, but for now, let's just say that if CEOs and upper management weren't so overpaid, we could probably have more jobs available, or even too many jobs available since the US has a very low birth rate.
Undocumented immigrants may put a slight strain on social services, or they may not. It would be hard to tell, since in reality, undocumented immigrants often do pay taxes when employed by companies that overlook citizenship. Not every "illegal" alien is a day laborer. Furthermore, we send financial aid to other countries anyway, what's the difference if we give a little aid to those who've made it to our soil?
To assume that illegal immigrants bring crime is first racist. Second, part of whatever crime they might bring is strictly due to the fact that we've made immigration so difficult that they feel forced into the illegal method of border crossing to begin with, and so they are already dipping their toes into unlawfulness. Third, a lot of the presumed crime is drug related, and that's a problem WE created by making drugs illegal. Again I'm opening a door to another debate, so I'll just quickly note that I'm not condoning or supporting drug use, but I do think it's wrong to make it illegal and it creates more crime, it creates the industry of drug production and smuggling. The more we try to contain drug proliferation, the greater the lengths cartels and dealers will go to protecting their source of income. As for terrorism, this is frankly a difficult subject but the bottom line is that you would have completely ban all travel, all tourism, permanently ground every plan and erect giant walls at every boarder and on every beach to keep out people who don't like the United States. Even then, some would still get through and you wouldn't have accomplished anything in the way of preventing domestic terrorism.
The planet was here before we were, the physical land we call the United States of America was here before we were, and in fact there were other people here before we were (I saw Gary Shandling say in an interview with Tavis Smiley that Native Americans should be in charge of immigration policy). So the idea that This Land is Our Land, apologies to Woodie, is a bit flawed. The land is there whether we are or not and the concept of telling certain people they aren't welcome is convoluted. We've created a society, and a greater community, and it's right to want to protect that, but should always be striving to perfect it and that means we can't just exclude people, that's not what democracy is about. We are in great danger of letting fear devolve into nationalist fervor and then further still to fascism.
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