Attention Arizona Voters

In a comment to my entry yesterday, a poster appearing under the name politics 101 leaves the following message intended to inform Arizona voters of the leftist attempt to deceive them with their ballot initiative Proposition 202.

(To the poster who left the message, rest assured that the people of the state of Oklahoma overwhelmingly support LAWA and its groundbreaking sanctions on unethical Arizona employers. And we despise with you any and all attempts from the left to deceive the voters of Arizona into supporting any ballot initiative meant to undermine the provisions of LAWA. It is vital that Arizona voters understand the true nature of this initiative and vote overwhelmingly in opposition to it, thus sending a clear message to leftists across America that an informed and determined citizenry cannot and will not be deceived by such tactics as employed in this initiative; that the left deceives itself in perceiving Americans so naive and so easily deceived as to cast their collective vote in favor of the destructive Prop 202.)

To Arizona voters:

VOTE NO ON PROP 202!!!

This November 4th Election
Arizona Prop 202 – Stop Illegal Hiring Fraud for Arizona voters.

HISTORY
Arizona has the most effective, non-discriminatory employer sanctions law in the nation. It has been upheld in four court challenges. The Legal Arizona Workers Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2008, requires all Arizona employers to use the E-Verify program. E-Verify is an essential tool to assure a legal workforce. It achieves an accuracy rate of 99.5 percent by matching names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and, in some instances, photos for job seekers.

As early as October of 2007, before the new law went into effect, Arizona saw positive results. Illegal workers were leaving voluntarily. Fraudulent documents and identity theft that were previously used were no longer enough to obtain employment.

The Stop Illegal Hiring Act (Prop 202) was drafted for a consortium of businesses, chambers of commerce, and trade associations seeking an endless supply of cheap illegal labor. Those organizations would profit from a modern-day form of slavery − exploiting illegal aliens. Those same groups were responsible for legal efforts that were rejected by District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
When legal challenges were thrown out, those groups devised Stop Illegal Hiring. This brilliant scheme is so deceptive. It counts on Arizona voters to only read the title and not pay attention to the contents. These authors of this proposition believe that the 70-75 percent of Arizona voters who want only legal workers employed will not look at the details.
Here is their deception.

THE PROPOSITION
The “Stop Illegal Hiring Act” guts the primary enforcement mechanisms of the current employer sanctions law and in actuality it is Employer Amnesty. It was designed to make sure you cannot prosecute employers if they use the I-9 process or the E-Verify program even if they are proven to have cheated the system:

• It abolishes required use of E-Verify. The initiative’s backers cleverly buried this key point on page seven. Even Governor Napolitano has stated that E-Verify is a very simple process and takes only minutes to accomplish. It would return E-Verify to a voluntary program and allow employers to resume the former “wink and nod” method of verifying employment eligibility through the I-9 process. Federal Judge John Walker blasted the current federal I-9 process, “The I-9 documents (that workers present to companies) are fraudulent.” Proposition 202 backers wish to perpetuate the same verification system that has been proven over 20 years to be rife with fraud and identity theft. If an employer complies with the I-9 requirement (which we know is not enforced by the feds) a court cannot find them guilty.

• It requires Arizona to wait until the Federal Government has taken action against an employer before the state takes action. We all know how ineffective and useless the Federal Government has been.

• It exempts thousands of Arizona employers by offering the use of the same standards that have not worked in the past. It removes corporations from the definition of “license.” It has introduced language to subject an employer to sanctions “if the employer has more than four employees and pays hourly wages or salary in cash and not by check or direct deposit to a financial institution” and fails to make withholding deductions, fails to report new hires to the Department of Economic Security or fails to provide coverage for workers compensation. The same provisions already exist for violations by employers with just one employee. It also provides that out of state employers (who are licensed in AZ) are not governed by the employer sanctions law.

• It eliminates the Silent Witness portion of the current law. All complaints regarding employer violations of the law must be written and signed. This would stop employees from reporting violations. Anonymous tips are an important tool in taking criminals, including serial killers, off the streets.

• It imposes an impossible standard of proof. High-level managers who are not officers or owners could hire illegal aliens with impunity, and would not face any enforcement.

CONCLUSION:
Arizona citizens are not as naïve as this proposition's sponsors assume!

The truth is Stop Illegal Hiring (Prop 202) allows employers the ability to continue to hire illegal aliens with impunity.

Don’t let the name fool you, this proposition will nullify Arizona’s current Fair and Legal Employment Act and make hiring of illegals easier with less chance of penalty.

Proposition 202 is simply Employer Amnesty.

Vote No on Proposition 202.


Don Goldwater
don@dongoldwater.com
http://www.dongoldwater.info

As I said in the other post, such examples of deceptive tactics employed by the left are in no way surprising to those who understand what the left is all about fundamentally. Indeed, the left could not have ever established its current dominance in America without employing various and sundry methods of deception, exploiting the goodness and the good will of average Americans. But it's all deception at bottom which constitutes the left. So we should not be shocked whenever the left acts like the left; whenever leftists employ fundamentally leftist tactics to move their points.

The parallels between the left and Islam are striking, as was mentioned in the other entry, perhaps the most striking example of which is the aforementioned Deceptive Quality inherent to both inordinate belief systems. But this deceptive quality inherent to both belief systems has a fundamental drawback and fatal flaw, it deceives its own adherents into believing that their deceptions will forever go on undiscovered.

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On the immigration front, cont.

I wrote two days ago about the 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling on Arizona's immigration law. The part of Arizona's law which had been challenged were the sections dealing with non-compliant employers, those sections intended to remove the incentive for employers to hire illegal (mostly) Mexican labor, and thereby remove the employment incentive for illegals to stay in Arizona. As with Oklahoma's law, as I said in the other post, these sections of the Arizona law are vital to the final achievement of the Bill's intent.

However, it occured to me later that what I'd read in the article about Arizona's law concerning employers of illegal aliens actually made Arizona's law tougher, quite a bit tougher as a matter of fact, than Oklahoma's law when it comes to employer sanctions. According to the article, which is linked in the other post, Arizona employers who are caught violating the law can lose their business licenses. Whereas, as I've explained before, Oklahoma's law does not go that far. In fact, according to the provisions in Oklahoma's law, employers are only required to verify the employment status of their employees if they wish to enter into contract with government organizations. Otherwise, Oklahoma employers are left free to hire illegal aliens, though they remain subject to surprise factory and jobsite raids by local, state, or federal authorities.

So the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Arizona's much tougher restrictions on employers while the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has thus far refused to do so with Oklahoma's comparatively weak employer sanctions -- sections seven and nine of the bill respectively -- saying that Oklahoma's provisions probably violate federal law and are therefore probably unconstitutional. That's pretty interesting, don't ya think?

Well, as I said in the other post, the Ninth Circuit's ruling gives me some hope that Oklahoma's provisions will eventually be upheld in the Tenth Circuit. Additionally, the author of Oklahoma's bill, Rep. Randy Terrill, has stated before that Oklahoma would like to expand on the law, and as I recall (though I could be wrong) part of Terrill's plan involves toughening up our employer sanctions once we've gotten over the initial legal hurdles we're facing at the moment. Hopefully the recent ruling on Arizona's law will help us achieve that as well. I for one am completely and utterly unsympathetic towards employers who would commit treason against their countrymen in this fashion, and fully support the introduction of stricter penalties against such non-compliant businesses and business owners. (Some of you may think the term "treason" is a bit harsh. I don't.)

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On the immigration front

Good news today out of Arizona. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, Sept. 17th, upheld the provisions in Arizona's immigration law which requires employers to verify the employments status of all new hires, and penalizes employers for knowingly hiring illegal aliens:

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld an Arizona law that penalizes businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants and requires them to verify the employment status of their workers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision rejected a challenge by business and civil-rights groups that contend the law infringes on federal immigration powers.

The law, intended to lessen the economic incentive for immigrants to sneak into the country, imposes civil penalties on employers by suspending or revoking their business licenses when they are found to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

While it upheld the law, a three-judge panel of the court left the door open for other challenges, saying no one has been accused of violating the law since it took effect nine months ago.

This is very good news for people like myself who advocate for state and local immigration control.

Oklahoma has similar provisions in its law, H.B. 1804, which are currently under federal suspension pending further hearings in the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. These provisions (sections seven and nine) are vital to the efficacy of Oklahoma's law. Let us hope that the 9th Circuit's ruling will help to effect a similar outcome in Oklahoma's case so that we in Oklahoma can get on with the business at hand; the business that should have begun on July 1st of this year.

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What is the connection between Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, sardines, a pickup truck, me and a Muskogee teen?

A couple of weeks ago while at a mall in Muskogee, Ok., I was approached in the parking lot by a young black teenager who was selling newspaper subscriptions to the Muskogee Phoenix. Without going into a lot of detail, I was impressed with young man's ambition, and his willingness to approach me and to answer my questions; questions such as "since I'm not a resident of Muskogee, what is the benefit to me of subscribing to the Muskogee Phoenix newspaper?" In the end the young man talked me right out of my money and into a subscription to said paper, where yesterday I discovered in Tuesday's edition this story about the arrest of 19 transient illegals who happened to pull into the wrong driveway at the wrong time, and obviously in the wrong state.

You know the moral of the story.

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Local enforcement of immigration laws works!

As I've said countless times, I firmly believe that the best, most effective (in a variety of ways) method of dealing with the immigration problem in this country is to leave it to the states and the local communities to do the vast majority of the "heavy lifting" for themselves. Do note that I didn't say "allow" them to do it, but leave it to them to do for themselves. In other words, get out of the way and let them govern themselves. They will. Case in point? Recent happenings in the border state Arizona. Here's the entirety of the article from the Intellectual Conservative:

Striking changes in Arizona as illegal immigrants flee the state
by Rachel Alexander

Arizona is leading the nation in local enforcement of laws against illegal immigration. As illegal immigrants leave the state, the state's most serious problems such as traffic congestion and the expense of teaching English Language Learner classes are dissipating.

Since Arizona's local law enforcement began enforcing illegal immigration laws and an employer sanctions law went into effect, illegal immigrants have been fleeing the state in large numbers. The effects have been far-ranging. Commuters are reporting fewer vehicles on the freeways, shortening their rush-hour commutes. What had become a serious transportation problem in Arizona is losing its urgency. English Learner Language (ELL) students started dropping out of school. This helped end a confrontation between the state legislature and a liberal federal judge who had ordered the state to spend more money on ELL classes.

Fewer illegal immigrants are using hospital emergency rooms, so waiting times have decreased. Although the rest of the country is in an economic slump, unemployment is going down in Arizona, from 4.5% in January to 4.1% in March. Day laborers loitering outside of Home Depot and other stores have mostly disappeared, ending months of confrontation between illegal immigrant sympathizers and protesters. Desert lands near the border are returning to their pristine condition and the wildlife is coming back. Identity theft and car thefts are decreasing. No one showed up on May 1 to march in immigrant rallies.

With illegal immigrants leaving, the state will see huge savings as fewer illegal immigrants use social welfare programs and the cost of arresting, prosecuting, incarcerating and deporting them decreases. Arizona is facing one of the worst budget deficits ever, looming as high as $2 billion in 2009, but the situation may resolve itself.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas are leading the local law enforcement efforts in Arizona against illegal immigration. Arizona is also home to State Representative Russell Pearce, who is responsible for spearheading possibly more laws against illegal immigration than any other state representative in the country. It is also home to Chris Simcox, President of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. Other counties around the state are beginning to follow the lead of Maricopa County, signing agreements with I.C.E. to permit their law enforcement agencies to arrest illegal immigrants. Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer intends to prosecute illegal immigrants for trespassing on public lands. Mesa mayor Keno Hawker recently wrote an op-ed in the East Valley Tribune praising Sheriff Joe Arpaio's sweeps of illegal immigrants. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik bypassed the Pima County Supervisors when they refused to authorize him to add two Border Patrol agents to his border crime unit, and added them anyways.

Although Arizona's Democrat Governor Janet Napolitano has vetoed most illegal immigration bills since 2002 when she entered office, Arizonans have bypassed her by sending initiatives directly to the ballot. In 2004, voters passed four illegal immigration measures with over 70% yes margins. A law targeting drophouses was signed into law earlier this month. An even stricter employer sanctions measure is currently underway to be on the ballot this fall.

Arizona's illegal immigrants are fleeing to sanctuary cities like San Francisco and states with less enforcement and laws prohibiting illegal immigration like Nebraska, Iowa, and Maryland. Since one out of every 10 illegal immigrant is a felon, the result is felons are disproportionately moving to these places.

Granted there are benefits that immigrants bring to our country. But those benefits are outweighed by the negatives when the immigrants cross illegally. There are too many rules, laws, traditions, and practices in society that conflict with illegal immigrants trying to make a living. Arizona's experiment may end up resolving the illegal immigration problem satisfactorily for all, because once the fiscal expense of illegal immigrants is brought down, revising the laws to permit more immigrants to enter the country legally will become more attractive and realistic.

Of course I'm of the opinion that legal immigration is also a huge problem in this country, not just illegal immigration; that if the effects of illegals fleeing the state of Arizona are as good as reported in the story, then it's reasonable to assume that greatly reducing the number of "legal immigrants" to this country would also have very positive short and long term effects (an opinion which doesn't seem to be shared by the writer, but I understand, it isn't pc to favor restrictions on legal immigration.). And of course I'd like to see this done as well at the state and local level in accordance with the tenth amendment, U.S. Constitution.

My hat goes off to the people of the great state of Arizona! Now to resolve that Muslim prayer issue in the Arizona House chambers...

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