Thread: Another traitor In Congress: Mike Honda

Immigration reform needs a path to citizenship

This month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, which allows state law enforcement officials to stop, question, detain and report individuals based on suspicion of undocumented status. Outrage against this bill is pervasive. Some say it hearkens back to Jim Crow; others say it legalizes racial profiling.

We understand Arizona's itch to initiate immigration reform given its estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants, exposure to cross-border drug and gun traffic and frustration with feds' foregoing legislation for decades. There are four glaring reasons, however, why this approach is grossly misguided.

First, the constitutionality of SB 1070 is dubious. The key legal issue, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center—all of whom are challenging the law's constitutionality—is whether Arizona's state law interferes with the U.S. government's duty to handle immigration. This is exactly what sunk Proposition 187, a similar initiative in California.

Proposition 187 was a ballot initiative passed in 1994 and designed to prohibit undocumented immigrants from accessing social services, health care and public education. It was found unconstitutional by a federal court on the grounds that regulation of immigration is a federal responsibility. Arizona might soon find, too, that federal law pre-empts its immigration laws. Already, an Arizona police officer has filed a lawsuit against the bill, and now the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit challenging SB 1070's constitutionality. Legal precedent alone should be sufficient to shut this bill down based on unconstitutionality.

Second, Arizona's attempt to fix immigration is financially unsound. Imagine if the U.S. followed Arizona's footsteps and sent new immigrants packing (It's hard to imagine who sends whom packing as we all immigrated at some point in recent history). Rather than giving immigrants a clear path to legal citizenship—because immigrants who become citizens pursue higher-paying jobs and higher education, thus spending more and providing higher tax revenue—imagine sending all undocumented immigrants home. The cost to our economy would be crippling, with losses of $2.6 trillion in gross domestic product during the next 10 years.

Conversely, a commitment to comprehensive reform would net our economy $1.5 trillion over the same period (This is UCLA data). By signing SB 1070, Arizona's governor thinks she is saving jobs and helping the local economy. The opposite is true. She will run the state further into debt. Arizona already faces one of the most severe state budget crises in America, spending roughly $10.1 billion while collecting only $6.4 billion in revenues.

Third, SB 1070 is ineffective in accomplishing its super-ordinate goal. By treating undocumented immigrants as criminals, it ensures that immigrants without papers stay far from police. This makes it far more difficult for police to do their work, which is why Arizona's Sahuarita Police Chief John Harris, on behalf of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, came out against the bill. It's also why Harris and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik voiced concerns about the law's vague provisions allowing citizens to sue officials for failing to enforce the bill, putting pressure on police to undertake racial profiling. Either way, this law allows for ample abuse, sends hard-working immigrants into the shadows and undermines the relationship between local law enforcement and the community.

Fourth, the tenor of Arizona's law takes our nation backward, not forward. With this bill, we are going further from American ideals. Consider the Japanese internment camps during World War II, where we dehumanized an entire race that had recently arrived and was actively contributing to our economy.

We have since then seen an increase in the freedoms on which this country was founded, from civil rights to women's rights. This push toward further freedoms must continue. We do that by ensuring that newly arrived immigrants are afforded the same rights and responsibilities as the immigrants who came before them, including a legal path to citizenship.

Therefore, it is absolutely essential that the U.S. Senate move fast to reform immigration. We cannot afford piecemeal state-by-state approaches, nor can we financially afford at the federal level the continued non-citizenship of 12 million undocumented immigrants. It is time we brought these newly arrived immigrants into the light. Not for the purpose of deporting them Arizona-style, but to bring them closer to citizenship American-style.

U.S. Rep. Mike Honda
http://www.mercurynews.com/los-gatos/ci ... ck_check=1

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400185

Support of American Muslims
Honda has been a defender of the civil rights of American Muslims. Soon after the September 11th attacks, Honda spoke at a convention of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) on October 2001. He told those in attendance not to change their identity or name. "My last name is Honda. You cannot be more Japanese than that." The congressman remembered what he and especially his parents had to go through when Pearl Harbor was attacked. "We were taken in a vehicle with windows covered, we had no idea where we were being taken." Because of that episode in his life, the congressman explained that he understood what the Muslims could be going through in America after the attack on September 11.[12]

In the Quran Oath Controversy of the 110th United States Congress, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) issued a letter to his constituents stating his view that the decision of Representative-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN) to use the Quran in his swearing-in ceremony is a threat to "the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America... I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policiesâ€

Makes me want to put him back into the internment camp.

because immigrants who become citizens pursue higher-paying jobs and higher education

But, but . . . I thought they were all farm workers, keeping the cost of lettuce low.

We have since then seen an increase in the freedoms on which this country was founded, from civil rights to women's rights. This push toward further freedoms must continue. We do that by ensuring that newly arrived immigrants are afforded the same rights and responsibilities as the immigrants who came before them, including a legal path to citizenship.

Does this guy know the law applies to Illegal Aliens? "Newly arrived Immigrants" already have the freedoms he mentions IF THEY COME HERE LEGALLY! If he really believes what he's saying why doesn't he just come out and say we should have OPEN BORDERS?