If you don’t want to read political ranting, stop here.  There’s nothing else in this particular blog entry but a political rant/discussion.  I’m giving you fair warning, so you can just move on to another entry in the blog to be entertained and informed. 

There’s an opinion piece on CNN’s website today that I take issue with.  So I’m going to reprint most, if not all of it, and respond to it on a point by point basis.  The italicized, bolded text is mine.  The rest is from the author who is introduced before his own rant begins.

 

Editor's note: Jose Antonio Vargas is the founder of Define American, a nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign that seeks to elevate the immigration conversation. An award-winning journalist, Vargas disclosed his undocumented immigration status in an essay for The New York Times Magazine in June 2011. Vargas attended California's public schools and early this year was named Alumnus of the Year by San Francisco State University.

(CNN) -- Arizona's immigration law, Senate Bill 1070, has generated a lot of ink recently, especially with a court ruling last week that allowed a controversial provision that in my view will result in racial profiling to move forward.

The law's goal is chilling: ramp up deportations of undocumented people by forcing local police into the difficult role of immigration agents. And with last week's ruling, police are now required to go out of their way to investigate the immigration status of everyone they "suspect" might be undocumented whom they arrest or stop.

 

Let’s start here.  Once again we have the usage of the word “undocumented” substituted for the word illegal.  The fact is that every single person described so gently as being “undocumented” is in fact, in this country in violation of our laws.  8 U.S.C. § 1325 : US Code - Section 1325: Improper entry by alien – is the law on this subject.  It makes entering or attempting to enter a criminal act.  Every single “undocumented” person in this nation is guilty of violating this section of the United States Code.  Regardless of why they are here, or how they came to be here.  This point is inarguable.

 

In practice, that will mean targeting people just for the way they look or speak, separating families, and trapping undocumented people in local jails for minor infractions to await deportation.

 

That may happen, but it isn’t the intent of the law.  The intent of the Arizona law is to investigate when someone is stopped in the course of ordinary law enforcement activity, if there is something to indicate that they aren’t in the U.S. legally.  The simplest evidence of this fact isn’t appearance, accent or anything else that would involve racial profiling.  The simplest evidence would be an adult who doesn’t have a driver’s license, particularly if they are being investigated as the result of a lawful traffic stop.

 

 

As an undocumented American -- and I am, in my heart, an American -- it is my hope that our nation doesn't follow Arizona's discriminatory example. Will Arizona become the norm, or can we work as a nation to fix dysfunctional immigration policies so that they reflect our best values as Americans?

All eyes are now on California for a key part of the answer.

Mr. Vargas is free to consider himself an “American”.  But he isn’t a citizen and he isn’t in this country legally.  I challenge anyone to name another nation on this planet where someone can enter the country illegally and not be subject to immediate arrest and subsequent deportation for simply being in that nation in violation of their laws.

 

Sitting on the Gov. Jerry Brown's desk is the most important piece of legislation for immigrant communities this year. By signing the bill, called the TRUST Act, Brown can prevent the separation of thousands of families, establish an alternative to Arizona's approach and send a powerful message to the nation: In a state built and replenished by generations of immigrants, fairness and equality matter.

Under the TRUST Act, local law enforcement would only be able to hold people for extra time, for deportation purposes, if the person has been convicted of, or charged with, a serious or violent felony.

 

The test for deportation shouldn’t be, being convicted or accused of a serious or violent felony.  The test should be presence in the country illegally.  Sadly, because of the deleterious impact on the economy, and the fact that there is a voting constituency that will support any candidate who panders to facilitating keeping illegals here within the borders of the U.S. in violation of our own laws, we are not actively enforcing this particular law.  The answer is a comprehensive solution, whereby we provide one final amnesty opportunity, with a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally who haven’t committed any other serious violation of our laws, while at the same time we seal our borders once and for all.  “Dream Acts” and what Obama has done for young people are not viable solutions.  The test Mr. Vargas wants to impose in the present situation is silly.

 

 

With the TRUST Act, Juana Reyes, the "tamale lady," never would have been stuck in Sacramento County Jail for 13 days on an immigration hold after the most absurd of arrests. With the TRUST Act, Reyes' children wouldn't have spent weeks worrying if they would ever see their mother again. She's still undocumented.

 

If Ms Reyes were actually Ms Smith, a U.S. citizen, in Mexico because she felt there was economic opportunity there, and she’d been arrested for the most absurd of reasons, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  Because as soon as she’d been arrested, she would have been deported back to the United States.  No discussion, no lamenting the plight of the “undocumented”. 

 

If Brown signs the bill, he will bring hope to millions of undocumented Americans like me, and some relief to our family members who fear that if we are arrested for even the most trivial of charges, they will never see us again.

 

If the risk of being separated from your loved ones is so daunting, perhaps that should be factored into the thought process on whether or not you should remain in this nation in violation of its laws.  The triviality of a crime is irrelevant.  The major crime in this case was already committed.  Illegal entry into the United States.   A crime that carries a maximum punishment for the first infraction of six months imprisonment, which rises to two years imprisonment for a subsequent violation.  The fact that there is a potential fine of $250,000 for engaging in a fraudulent marriage in order to enter the nation illegally makes it quite clear that our Congress considers illegal immigration a crime of more than a trivial nature.

 

Undocumented people and their allies -- their relatives and friends, their neighbors and co-workers -- have created a new political climate in which the passage of the TRUST Act is not simply the right thing to do, but the politically strategic thing to do, with supporters from across the political spectrum, from Nancy Pelosi to right-leaning think tanks such as the Cato Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute.

 

It must be noted that the current climate is the result of pandering to a constituency within the electorate whose support is a requirement to win control of the government through the upcoming election.  That is what makes it a strategic political move at this point in time.  The basic parameters of the equation haven’t changed.

 

And I recognize that the children of illegals who are here illegally through no fault of their own are victims.  But as I maintain, the answer isn’t patchwork solutions like the bill Mr. Vargas wants Governor Brown to sign.  It is only through comprehensive immigration reform that a real solution will be found.

 

Further, the hypocrisy of Mr. Vargas’ position must be pointed out.  When the courts were discussing SB1070, Mr. Vargas and other opponents of this bill argued strenuously that immigration law and its enforcement is the province of the Federal government and that state’s shouldn’t be enforcing immigration law.  Under Brown’s bill, the state of CA would be instructing law enforcement to not enforce immigration law so it may seem consistent, but it is not.  In fact it’s asking state law enforcement to break its sacred covenant with federal law enforcement, that they will cooperate with one another, support one another on request, and hold each other’s suspects until such time as these violators can be transferred into the custody of the agency with appropriate jurisdiction.  Should we sit by and watch helplessly as other states react to this by refusing to hold CA suspects apprehended in other states?  Do we want the FBI, DEA and other federal agencies to refrain from holding people wanted by the State of California, because we will no longer cooperate with ICE?

 

The enactment of TRUST would also help turn the page on a painful era of our state's history that the implementation of the Arizona law evokes.

A year after I arrived in this country at the age of 12, four years before I knew about my own undocumented status, I watched with anxiety as California voters passed Proposition 187. That ballot initiative, in many ways, was the precursor to SB 1070 and House Bill 56, Arizona's and Alabama's "show-me-your-papers" laws, respectively. Although courts would ultimately reject Proposition 187, fear immediately gripped immigrants in California upon its passage in 1994.

The specter of local police acting as immigration agents was one of the measure's most unsettling provisions. And despite how much California has changed in nearly two decades, the federal Secure Communities deportation program, which was supposed to target people "convicted of serious criminal offenses," has instead effectively done what Proposition 187's backers tried to do -- turn local law enforcement into de facto immigration authorities.

 

The flaws of Prop 187 can’t be used to justify the TRUST act as retroactive justice. 

 

What if while driving from my alma mater, San Francisco State University, down to my hometown of Mountain View, I were stopped for the most minor traffic infraction? Or, perhaps, simply profiled?

I could be detained for driving without a valid license. Then, under "Secure Communities," my fingerprints would be sent to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement no matter how minor the charge. ICE would then ask the jail to hold me for extra time, at local expense, until it came to pick me up for deportation as my grandmother, a naturalized American citizen, waited for me at home in Mountain View.

 

Mr. Vargas, should you have been driving from your alma mater to your hometown without a license, on the public highways?  That’s another crime.  You’re an award winning journalist, according to your profile? Were you employed by someone when you won those awards?  That’s yet another crime, both by you and the employer.

 

How many of us are forced to spend money to purchase uninsured motorist coverage because of people like you, who are driving on our highways in violation of our laws and failing to carry the required insurance?  Oh wait, that’s another crime you’ve committed.  Assuming you worked illegally, my count of your infractions is now at four and possibly rising.  Do we want to discuss the higher accident rates of unlicensed drivers?

 

This is essentially what's happened to about 80,000 Californians who have quietly been torn from their families under the ridiculously named federal deportation program, "Secure Communities."

Seven out of 10 people detained nationally under Secure Communities either had no convictions or committed minor offenses, according to ICE statistics. And even though top law professors have confirmed that requests to detain immigrants for additional time are "optional," many California jurisdictions have submitted, no matter the damage done to community-police relations.

Enter the TRUST Act, which limits responses to ICE's requests to detain people in local jails for additional time for deportation purposes.

 

If Governor Brown signs this act, which I suspect he will, it will be a travesty of justice.  The government of California is endorsing a violation of federal law by doing this. 

 

I have no desire to see Mr. Vargas deported personally.  I want there to be a solution to this problem once and for all.  The TRUST act is not the solution,  just as the fight to legalize gay marriage in CA wasn’t the comprehensive solution.  Overturning the Defense of Marriage Act once and for all so that every state will be forced to recognize same-sex marriage performed in any state is that answer. 

 

Let’s force the Congress to deal with and solve this problem once and for all, not do dumb, patchwork things that will cause more problems than they solve.