Pirate's Cove

On the plus side, relaxing rules on illegal immigration failed in Arizona

PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — By rejecting Proposition 202, Arizonans sent a message that they will not be fooled by special interests into scrapping the state’s best instrument to fight illegal immigration. Arizona ballot initiative Prop 202 has been defeated, thus leaving in place the state’s groundbreaking worksite employment verification laws. Astute voters recognized that Prop 202, deceptively labeled as the Stop Illegal Hiring Act and aggressively promoted by business interests, would have actually increased the hiring of illegal aliens as it dismantled Arizona’s mandatory use of E-Verify.

At the beginning of 2008, Arizona chose to make E-Verify mandatory for all new hires. Managed by the DHS, E-Verify allows employers to use an automated internet-based system to check new hire’s information against more than 500 million records in Social Security and Homeland Security databases. The program is 99.5% accurate and so popular that over 1000 businesses nationwide sign up every week. The defeat of Prop 202 allows Arizona to continue to participate in the nation’s basic worksite employment verification system – a fair, practical and highly effective tool to reduce the incidence of illegal aliens entering the workforce.  

“The mandatory use of E-Verify in Arizona is helping break business’s addiction to an illegal-alien, low-wage workforce,” said Dan Stein, President of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “Their dependence on cheap labor and their fear of losing it led to desperate measures. They fraudulently told the public that Prop 202 would prevent illegal aliens from being hired when it would have done exactly the opposite. These tactics are proof that E-Verify is working as it should and giving Arizona residents the protections they deserve. Arizona voters are to be congratulated for keeping themselves informed and voting responsibly.”

It went down in defeat 59%-41%. Hopefully, other states will look at this and follow along. Not sure I have a lot of confidence in North Carolina’s Governor elect, Bev Perdue (D), but, then again, I had little confidence in pat McCrory (R), who was a long time mayor of Charlotte, a known and official sanctuary city, and tended to avoid illegal immigration discussion. He ducked it the time I got to ask on the radio.

In other ballot measures, it looks like the People of California and Florida will make gay marriage illegal, at least till the courts nullify their votes. Still about 9% of the vote out there in Ca, and 1% in Florida.

Likewise, affirmative action has been voted out in Nebraska, and is tied up in Colorado, with 13% of the vote out there. The courts will certainly nullify those votes, as well.

It was a good day for abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and doctor assisted suicide, which, while I disagree with the first 2, at least the proposition were in the States, where they are supposed to Constitutionally be.

And, just for the record, while I am somewhat against officially sanctioned gay marriage, I am for civil unions. This is America, a land of freedom, and, if two people love each other, who the hell am I to stand in there way, and restrict their rights to be together under the law?