Before the Federation for American Immigration Reform crowd got Arizona's "Papers, please" law on the books, they worked on a similar measure in Prince William County, Virginia, in 2007. The Prince William County Board of Supervisors gave up on the plan for enhanced enforcement of immigration laws after realizing it would cost them at least $14 million over five years.
The mess in Arizona has given new life to "9500 Liberty," a documentary by Coffee Party founder Annabel Park. After winning awards on the film circuit in 2009, "9500 Liberty" is now playing in Arizona theaters as part of a national tour of cinemas and house parties.





The second paragraph could use a bit of editing.
Sure could. Thank you.
With that out of the way... It looks like a really interesting film.
It looks like a good documentary, but I don't think I can watch it - I'm tired of hate.
I'm trying to figure out the woman who said, "Who is responsible for 9/11? Illegals." at about 2:05 in the clip. On what basis is she making this claim? Was it the legal status of the hijackers? All I was able to find was a few blogs and a group called "9/11 Families for a Secure America," who appear to have as their primary objective closing our nation's "open borders" -- which makes them rather suspect.
( http://www.911fsafoundation.org/ ).
Can anyone shed some light on this claim, and its credibility?
It isn't their concern over "open borders" (their words, not mine -- hence the quotes) that makes their website suspect. It is the fact that I was unable to find any stories from reputable sources detailing the link between illegal immigration and 9/11.
Yes, it is the role of the Federal to protect the borders, and it's also the role of Federal to regulate and impose law on immigration.
Immigration is not a state role. There are so many wrongs on this Arizona immigration law - and to think other states are following suit (Pennsylvania, New Jersey). And they are doing it as a push from the people to help balance books. As some have declared in Pennsylvania "throw the book at them!"
We have a rule of thumb in America that we uphold - due process. If we incorporate this massive Federal issue into our county, city, and state levels of law - it means we must also do due process, to be consistant with our standards. There are no exceptions for by passing due process in our judicial system.
If we go on a massive witch hunt on a state and county/city level, it will bust the books on those levels and over flow our already overflowing jail system.
But people want this because of taxes and financial desperation -and some want this because they are sick and tired of having to press 1 for English and some don't realize how racial the backing of it is.
I've heard that, "as soon as it gets passed in "our" state, we'll be hearing crickets and we'll pay less taxes!"
By my recollection, that's facism...nationalism.
If state gains power over immigration, and if the state gets pushed hard on not meeting the demands of finding and prosecuting illegal immigrants, what is to say that a State wont push check points for "papers please".
Other countries, who live in closed societies, have paper check points. We do not, because we're the United States.
I would rather see the Federal government handle immigration...where it belongs!
State handling of immigration brings too many uncertaintees, including financial responisibilty of dealing with such a climatic crisis.
State tax and city tax will be paying for the enforcement of their immigration law(s). And like the war on drugs, it will burst the bank roll.
It won't stop the ilegal limmigrants from coming. A state will end up being fiscally responsible.
Besides, if you think that states have a hard enough time with communication on domestic issues, like say child support...what makes you think talking with other countries is going any easier?
I say if Arizona wants to implement an immigration law, let Arizona pay for implementing it - including shipment fees.
The Federal government needs to step in and take them to trial on this position.
For starters, does the state actually know the role it will have in implementing that law?
I'm from Pennsylvania. A state that wants to adopt immigration laws and is being pushed by the citizens to create it. A non-border state wants to copy cat a border state. What is a non-border state doing trying to copy these laws that were made because "illegals are terrorizing our border towns"?
Arizona needs to understand fully, as a state, what it's role will be in implementing this immigration law.
Mike, since no one has addressed your question, this may help. All of the 19 terrorists that attacked us on 9/11 entered the US legally through ports of entry. At least six of those overstayed their visas, however. Almost half of the illegals in the US entered legally, then overstayed their visa.
I've put a link below to an NPR story about this, but there are others out there. You just have to be careful which site you choose. As in no other topic I've seen, illegal immigration is subject to wags and just plain made up numbers and facts.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5485917
hatenomore -- exactly what "mess" are you talking about?
For more than two decades, the U.S. government has tried without success to stamp out unauthorized immigration through enforcement efforts at the border and in the interior of the country without fundamentally reforming the broken immigration system that spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place. Ironically, while billions upon billions of dollars have been poured into enforcement, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has increased dramatically.
The enforcement-only approach to our immigration problems is clearly not yielding the results needed. It is time for Congress and the President to propose comprehensive solutions to the complex problem of our broken immigration system.
A January 2010 Warren Institute report highlights the impact of Operation Streamline (a program that focuses on prosecuting border crossers) on immigration enforcement and how increased attention on nonviolent border crossers has taken resources away from investigating smuggling operations. An additional report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that federal immigration prosecutions rose to record levels during fiscal year 2009, and that a shift in priorities has created the largest number of federal immigration prosecutions of non-violent border crossers ever. Thus, while the federal government spends billions of dollars prosecuting non-violent immigration violators, more serious criminals involved in drugs, weapons, and organized crime face a lower probability of prosecution. The number of deportations each year more than tripled during the Bush era -- and has kept going up since then. During fiscal year 2009, the first full fiscal year of Obama's presidency, 387,790 immigrants were deported -- almost 100,000 more during the last full fiscal year of the Bush presidency. Department of Homeland Security officials stress one big difference between Bush and Obama policies: that the percentage of convicted criminals among the deportees is rising dramatically. So what exactly is this "mess" that you say the feds are ignoring?
If we have laws for immigration, that would work if enforced, why make more laws?
But I agree, let's keep immigration on the Federal level only.
By the way, I do agree that enforcing border patrol has escalated and compounded the entire situation. I feel it has actually made it a zone for organized crime. Kind of like say Prohibition did and "the war in drugs." Violent crimes have increased due to those two movements.
Gang activity has dramatically increased.
This is a very very compounded issue and very much needs good foreign relationships in order to help solve it.
I think the more we educate ourselves and illuminate our role in immigration and refugees, we might actually start to realize the depth we all play in illegal immigration.
The issue is much deeper and more compunded then we realize. We also have more of a hand in creating it then we realize.
Do you think making a fence will keep people out or more clever and more desperate to cross it? If one can not do it alone, he will align himself and organize a means. When we have small gangs (organizations) clamoring to use the same small methods and openings - we have gang wars. And through it all they become more and more violent.
The border is more patrolled now then it was 10 years ago. We have more organized ways of crossing now then what we did 10 years ago We also have more violent crimes in that whole border region...which is also all the way through Mexico, by the way.
Actually I don't support slave conditions. As far as I can tell about ecconomics, it only works with a range of pay wages. Lower pay wages are slaves, in my book, in the economy. My stance is that most of America don't really know the role that they play in why refugees seek comming here. All we do is dehumanize and depersonalize them, by calling them illegals.
I think if we took the veil of llegality off of them and see the person, we might actually see the source. If we see the source, we can better understand the complexity of the problem to better fix the problem.
Ps, you wanted to know what kind racist laws were going on in Arizona? Arizona just recently passed a ban on all ethnic studies - including African American studies.
As a note the more I look into our history - federalism, anti-federalism (think tea party) - the more I think that we are repeating our history. This movement has the potential to seperate us. Just think, the Civil War was about a cry for small government, but looking in it was deeper on keeping non-whites at lower class. It was about ethnicity.
In our history, we masked the real reasons for our outlandish, self-centetred, outright hate. It seems to me, quite a few are using the same chess move - "small government" - and it's appealing to quite a few.
It appealed and was accepted by people, due to ecconomic turmoil. Sound familiar? I think so.
Most a people accept this view because of our economic crisis.
People actually think it's the illegals fault that our economy is failing. I mean, why else reach with all the might and all the anger in getting rid of them with the excuse of money woes?
I know someone who cries about her husbands pay check - he makes over $2000 in a pay period but only brings home $1000. She uses that as part of her defense in wanting a NJ immigration law.
What happens when these state laws get passed and we start to realize that we aren't seeing the progress and we aren't seeing the relief of our justifacation?
What happens when we need to build bigger jails, because people want them to sit in jail for breaking the law?
State money, increased state and local tax, will result in taking on these new roles in enforcement.
Please look into our history of immigration. With all the waves of immigration, came ethnic hatred, and was justified with "they take our jobs" "crimes"...."they speak funny" ..."they don't know English" " they're not American". I see this as the new wave of immigration - the complexity is that we have legality to allow the aggression to rage out.
Life is a 3D puzzle and we all have a piece!
Rob, none of this is really new. Hoover deported over a million illegals to open up more jobs for Americans in the early years of the depression. Truman and Eisenhower did the same to free up jobs for vets returning home after WWII. I don't know how successful any of that was. Obviously the Hoover era project didn't work, as it wasn't until WWII in 1941 or so that the economy finally climbed out of the appalling conditions that had existed since the 29 crash.
It seems we need to blame something when times get tough. Yes, I support deporting illegals! I don't delude myself that it will solve all the problems the country or Arizona faces, and I'm amazed at the people who believe it will. I've actually heard people here in Arizona talk about how we'll have full employment and no crime when SB1070 comes into play.
The link below leads to a pretty good article about "Operation Wetback," as it was called. I make no guarantees about the website! I'm not familiar with this group, but it seems to have legitimate citations on the article itself, so I offer it under those conditions.
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=11145
i love this video. you should be very proud of it. i had no idea the tumult inside arizona not living near that state, but it is absolutely refreshing to see the push back to these hideous racist laws. it's jim crow for mexicans.
i learned some spanish watching a 'democracy now' vid, about the bolivian people fighting a large multinational who was robbing bolivian resources without compensation. they chanted "justicia ahora". it also applies to the good hearted, hard working immigrants of arizona and america. JUSTICE NOW!
Maddow коммунист Maddow это коммунистическая пропаганда
Cute, you can automatic translation tools or a dictionary. Yet Rachel isn't even remotely a communist.