By Ariana Pekary, producer
If the people of Arizona wanted to scare away Latinos, their new law, SB 1070, seems to be working. Official numbers aren’t known, but the Christian Science Monitor is reporting that there is already a detectable decrease in the number of Hispanics throughout the state. Where they are going, however is unknown. Now, depending on which side of the debate you find yourself, this either is a legalized form of harassment by discrimination or a common sense way to manage the residents of a border state.
The question we ask in today’s show, and the question people from the Department of Justice to legal scholars have been asking, is is this law legal? Are the newly-defined crimes constitutional? The answer to that question is yet TBD (most likely by SCOTUS, if the DOJ has its way), and in the meantime, this is a good summary of the issues at hand.
Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute also has an informative analysis of the law here and here.
The paper co-written by Professor Jack Chin is titled Arizona State Bill 1070: Legal Issues Raised By Arizona’s New Statute Regulating Immigration.
For the Civil Liberties advocates out there, this video is for you.