An update on Arizona

Obama spoke on the issue of the new immigration bill in Arizona: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/23/obama.immigration/index.html?hpt=T1

He calls it "misguided," and says that he's going to have the situation monitored to make sure it doesn't violate civil rights of people.

Included on the page is Obama swearing in some immigrants--people just like I was yesterday-- taking the oath of naturalization. As an immigrant turned citizen, it totally throws me off that you could "tell who's not a citizen by looking at them," without racial profiling. The people at the Milwaukee Courthouse with me yesterday were like a pamphlet on diversity. I fraternized with people from Ghana, Mexico, India, and Canada. They are all now citizens of America who do good work, and want to assert that they belong here.

I want to know why illegal immigrants are not legal immigrants. I want to know what programs could be built to stop this from happening. Surely, as long as immigration is by the book, it should pose no threat to other Americans. It's desperation, in many cases, that causes undocumented immigrants to end up in America.

Being a nation of immigrants, to me, means that we recognize what people who are different from us have to offer and the rights they should have like any other to live their own lives.

The judge yesterday said, "The Constitution doesn't guarantee you happiness. No one can do that. But it does guarantee you the opportunity to pursue it. You have to understand that the Constitution is a document that limits the power of your rulers. Power can corrupt in the most awful of ways. But the best leaders are those who are not impressed with power. The constitution: it gives you the power to question your government. It also gives you the power to due process; you can take anyone in the country, even the president of the United States into court if they violate your rights, because no one is above the law."

What these people want is the chance to pursue happiness, just like any other one of us. Profiling of maybe-maybe-not-citizens violates the right to due process. Although no one is above the law, including undocumented immigrants, it is necessary as always to use judgment to address these problems. Isabel Garcia repeated over again in the CNN interview I posted earlier that, "This is not a police matter, this is not an executive matter." I don't think the issue with undocumented aliens is as black and white as "it's against the law to be in this country undocumented." It's a much more nuanced issue, which will take more than this law (that is a step backwards anyway!)

It is in this situation that it is important to question the power of our lawmakers and the enforcers of these laws.