Praising Arizona?

Thursday’s editorial suggests that Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, while understandable, is not yet appropriate for South Carolina.

Though less-noble factors may be at play, the ever-harsher wave of new state and local laws governing illegal immigration is due in part to the public’s ongoing frustration with the federal government’s failure to solve the problem.

Last month, the state of Arizona re-invigorated the immigration debate by passing a new law that requires, during any “lawful contact” with a police officer, when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.”

Before we get carried away with other state’s efforts, however, it’s worth reviewing what’s already on the books here in South Carolina. Two years ago, the Statehouse passed its own set of immigration reforms.

The worst measure in the pack, clearly, was one barring illegal immigrants from the state’s technical college system - even though they were already paying full, out-of-state tuition, which more than pays for the cost of their education. Keeping intelligent, highly-motivated students from purchasing an education at full price serves no practical purpose, but unjustly punishes children who often were brought to the U.S. as children.

Much more reasonable were the reforms aimed at curbing the practices of businesses that hire illegal immigrants, thus maintaining the demand for unfairly cheap, off-the-books labor that keeps immigrants headed here. Beginning July 1, the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will begin auditing businesses with fewer than 100 employees (larger companies have already been scrutinized) to make sure they are verifying their employees’ citizenship with either a S.C. Driver’s License or a search of a federal database.

This law has teeth. Pleasant Places landscaping of Mt. Pleasant recently paid a $11,500 fine plus $20,000 more in attorney fees after running afoul of the new law twice. The maximum fine is $1,000 per violation, and employers found to be willingly hiring illegal immigrants risk losing their business license.

Suddenly, cheap labor is no longer so cheap. South Carolina has provided a serious financial disincentive to employers who formerly hired illegal immigrants, which may reduce their reasons for being in the state.

Arizona’s method, by contrast, addresses the symptom of the problem without doing much about the cause. To be fair, previous laws in Arizona have targeted employers, but the problem is more complex there because of the state’s position on the border. Meanwhile, the fears of racial profiling raised by the law are legitimate, as Arizona police will now be given very wide latitude (“any lawful contact” with an officer) to initiate an investigation. The law specifies that more than just race must be used as a criteria, but legal experts agree that the law creates a legal gray area and that the potential for abuse is high.

The circumstances here in South Carolina are far different that in Arizona. Rather than immediately following them into unexplored legal territory and burdening state and local officers with new duties even as we cut their funding, let’s see how effective our own new laws that still have yet to go into effect are first.

Last month, the state of Arizona re-invigorated the immigration debate by passing a new law that requires, during any “lawful contact” with a police officer, when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.”

Before we get carried away with other state’s efforts, however, it’s worth reviewing what’s already on the books here in South Carolina. Two years ago, the Statehouse passed its own set of immigration reforms.

The worst measure in the pack, clearly, was one barring illegal immigrants from the state’s technical college system - even though they were already paying full, out-of-state tuition, which more than pays for the cost of their education. Keeping intelligent, highly-motivated students from purchasing an education at full price serves no practical purpose, but unjustly punishes children who often were brought to the U.S. as children.

Much more reasonable were the reforms aimed at curbing the practices of businesses that hire illegal immigrants, thus maintaining the demand for unfairly cheap, off-the-books labor that keeps immigrants headed here. Beginning July 1, the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will begin auditing businesses with fewer than 100 employees (larger companies have already been scrutinized) to make sure they are verifying their employees’ citizenship with either a S.C. Driver’s License or a search of a federal database.

This law has teeth. Pleasant Places landscaping of Mt. Pleasant recently paid a $11,500 fine plus $20,000 more in attorney fees after running afoul of the new law twice. The maximum fine is $1,000 per violation, and employers found to be willingly hiring illegal immigrants risk losing their business license.

Suddenly, cheap labor is no longer so cheap. South Carolina has provided a serious financial disincentive to employers who formerly hired illegal immigrants, which may reduce their reasons for being in the state.

Arizona’s method, by contrast, addresses the symptom of the problem without doing much about the cause. To be fair, previous laws in Arizona have targeted employers, but the problem is more complex there because of the state’s position on the border. Meanwhile, the fears of racial profiling raised by the law are legitimate, as Arizona police will now be given very wide latitude (“any lawful contact” with an officer) to initiate an investigation. The law specifies that more than just race must be used as a criteria, but legal experts agree that the law creates a legal gray area and that the potential for abuse is high.

The circumstances here in South Carolina are far different that in Arizona. Rather than immediately following them into unexplored legal territory and burdening state and local officers with new duties even as we cut their funding, let’s see how effective our own new laws that still have yet to go into effect are first.