So what do we do? Arizona wants people who seem to be here illegally to show some solidly valid identification. This rule has brought an outcry from people who say the idea sounds too much like cinema Nazis shouting, “Show me your papers.”
It does have a little of that feel. ID is ID. But there’s a big difference. People without proper ID in Arizona are not going to be sent to death camps. Generally, they’re supposed to be sent home. (And as one of the legislation’s writers points out, foreigners have been required by federal law to carry this documentation since 1940.)
Forever amnesty? But if we’re too polite to insist on reliable ID from people who don’t speak English (in a nation where the English languish is a requirement of citizenship), then how would any new immigration-amnesty law work?
The 1986 immigration-amnesty law -- the one currently on the books -- forced me to provide three forms of identification when I applied for a job in 1987. As the years went by, that ID requirement was nearly forgotten by employers, and the federal government generally stopped enforcing it.
Which brings us to today’s 11 million people here illegally, and more pouring in through Arizona every day.
What control? So if we again give illegal immigrants amnesty, as we did in 1986, how do we also get back to border control without demanding proper ID? Do we just continue letting foreigners trespass, and then wait another 25 years to give them amnesty? What’s the difference between that policy and simply annexing all of Latin America?
One way to reduce the problem is letting police, under reasonable circumstances, demand proper ID. But if that is unacceptably distasteful, or if we know we’ll abandon a new ID requirement as fast as we gutted the 1986 law, then finish that wall.
Frank Warner
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See also: Why Arizona Drew a Line, in The New York Times.
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