Thread: Third excerpt from Arpaio's new book

Third excerpt from Arpaio's new book
Jun. 5, 2008 07:27 PM

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of five excerpts we're running this week from Joe's Law: America's Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs, and Everything Else That Threatens America, the new book by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Len Sherman. Today, at 11 a.m., Arpaio will answer questions from readers at our Web site, aztalk.azcentral.com.

Cutting through the hype and accusations, misstatements and emotion, here, in a couple of pages, is my take on illegal immigration.

Again, I must state that I have compassion for the people trying to cross our border, in search of a better life. My parents came to this country from Italy. But they came legally, just like the millions others who left their homes to find new opportunities, new freedoms, new futures.

There were other differences as well. My parents, like all other immigrants exclusive of those from Mexico, held to certain hopes and truths:

1) My parents left Italy and basically never expected to return, unlike the illegal Mexican immigrants, whose country is contiguous to the U.S., and who not only take their earnings and return home, going back and forth over the border, but are encouraged to do exactly so by the Mexican government, in order to help sustain Mexico's economy. And they have done so to the tune of more than twenty billions dollars last year.

2) My parents did not regard any inch of America soil as somehow really belonging to Italy, and their arrival here somehow constituted a "reconquest" of that land. A growing movement among not only Mexican nationals but also some Mexican-Americans contends that the U.S. stole what is now California, Arizona and Texas, for a start, and that the massive immigration over the border will speed and guarantee the "reconquista" of these lands, returning them to Mexico.

3) Previous immigrant groups, while congregating together, also dispersed throughout the U.S., accounting, for instance, the existence of a "Little Italy" in city after city. This is in stark contrast to the exceptional concentration of Mexicans in the southwest. This has permitted the second and third generations of Mexican immigrants to maintain identities, from language to customs to beliefs, separate from the American mainstream, as opposed to so many millions of immigrants from other places, who longed for their children to become assimilated into their new homeland instantly and thoroughly.

4) As I mentioned, my parents came to America legally. That was the norm, for our entire history. No other group except the Mexicans, and other Hispanics as well, has broken the immigration laws in such astonishing numbers.

5) The scale of the immigration is unprecedented. How many Mexicans are illegally in this country? Ten million? Fifteen million? Twenty million? No one really knows for sure.

6) Usually, specific groups immigrate for only a relatively short time: the potato famine brought the Irish in the 1840s and 50s, and ended up with Civil War. Large-scale Mexican immigration started in the 1960s, continues to this day, and promises to continue - unless we do something - indefinitely.

I'm hardly the first to consider these factors. Many others, led by the scholar and author Samuel P. Huntington, have gone into these issues in far greater depth.

These issues do not mean that Mexicans are our enemies, or that we have to cut off all Mexican (and other Hispanic) immigration. It does mean that we have to understand what is happening, and what underlying facts are pushing people to act in certain ways, and deal with all of this intelligently and forcefully.

I've always enjoyed terrific support from the Hispanic community, without which I might not be sheriff, and have always worked to serve and protect their homes and businesses and neighborhoods, same as my deputies serve and protect the homes and businesses and neighborhoods of everyone in Maricopa County. I do not expect my support to drop because I am enforcing the laws of Arizona and the United States, because my many years in law enforcement, including four terms as sheriff, have evidently demonstrated to the majority of Maricopa County citizens, including the sizable number of Hispanic citizens within that population, that I deserve their support. Otherwise, denied their support, I wouldn't have over approval rating over eighty percent, a measure of support that I know no other elected official in Arizona can claim, and I doubt any significant elected official anywhere in the country can equal. I've enjoyed that measure of support, virtually without interruption, for the fifteen years I've been in office, because of the work I have done and the stands I have taken.

In fact, isn't it offensive to assume that Hispanics are somehow less interested in enforcing the laws of our country? Isn't it naive at best, racist at worst, to assume that Hispanic citizens are less concerned with the security of our borders and the consequences of unchecked, unregulated, uncontrolled illegal immigration, that they constitute some mindless bloc, reflexively ready to destroy the American future in favor of promoting Mexico or wherever else they once hailed from?

It's offensive and it's not true.

The catch-and-release formula the feds employed wasn't working, and never would - the penalty for getting caught was minimal, the potential reward in successfully crossing over too great, for people to stop coming. That was what we were doing in Maricopa County, not simply arresting illegals but putting them in jail. By delaying their return to Mexico even a little, we were interfering with their ability to make money, interfering with their reason for coming to America.

That's what I wanted the federal government to do, to gather together as many old army tents as they could find, erect those tents along the border, arraign and try the illegals in courts set up close to those tents, and put those convicted of illegally crossing the border into the United States into those tents for six months. In no time, and I mean very, very quickly, illegal immigration will dwindle to an astonishing extent.

Can it really be that simple? Yes. And even if you aren't convinced, I'd like to know why it doesn't make sense. What is its fatal flaw? And if you can't find a fatal flaw, on either a practical, economic, or political level, why not give it a try and see what happens?

Look, the problem began with us. For twenty years, nobody cared how many Mexicans and other Latins crossed the border. Nobody cared where they traveled or where they worked or what they did with their money or how they raised their families. We did care that our lawns got mowed and our trees got pruned and our babies' diapers got changed and our restaurants' dishes got washed. We created the problem because it suited our purposes, and also because we were too lazy to put the time and resources into stopping it.

We created a situation where, over many years, word spread through Latin America that the United States, quietly if not overtly, welcomed anyone willing to come and work. Not that there weren't always obstacles to their trek. As fervently as Mexican politicians like to complain about the "harsh" treatment meted out to their fellow citizens on our side of the border, for years Mexico has arrested, imprisoned, and mistreated all men, women and children crossing Mexico's southern border, on their way north, whether they hailed from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador. Arrested, imprisoned, mistreated, and then summarily thrown back across Mexico's border. While the Mexican authorities maltreat citizens of its fellow Latin nations, it encourages its own people to cross the American border, both to earn funds to send back to Mexico, and to release some of the social and economic pressure building inside Mexico.

So, in a line, there's sufficient hypocrisy and blame to go around to include everybody.

But that's not an answer. That's not good enough. Facts are facts, the situation is what it is, and we have to deal with it. As far as I can see, I haven't heard anyone come up with a simpler, safer, more secure solution than tents on the border and actual prison terms. Cut off the incentive for coming - cut off access, stop the problem right there, at the border, block the routes and nab everyone - and maybe we'll have something substantial and real to show for it.

www.azcentral.com

Yes Facts are facts Joe . I wished you had mentioned the cheap gas in Mexico at $2.10 gal to our $4. a gallon. We've been had by Cheney and BushCo says OK all the way to the bank. Oh Not a U.S bank , one of those neat little off shore deals. Bring on the Mexicans and their hate groups . We've earned it . Two elections stolen and we sit and say Hmm !