One of the biggest controversial issues I’ve been watching on television and also online is the Arizona Immigration Law. Basically the Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer signed an immigration bill into law stating that immigrants in Arizona are required to carry their alien registration documents at all times and the local police are required to question people if they are suspected to be an illegal immigrant. The bill also mentioned punishment for those who hire illegal immigrant laborers or transport them while knowing they are illegal. Although this is a local issue in the United States other international press has been writing articles stating their opinion on this issue.
Starting locally, the New York Times wrote about this story right when it came out, the article entitled, “Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration.” The New York Times stated that this law is the “broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations,” mentioning that within this new law, Governor Brewer is giving the police “broad power” to detain anyone who is suspected of being in the United States illegally. Some critics have mentioned that granting the police this right is like “an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship.” An interesting point that the New York Times used was the perspective of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles on this issue and how he believes that how the authorities, such as the local police have power to demand documents is like “Nazism.” I thought this was interesting because so many places around the United States have many good and bad police officials, and if they are given a right such as demanding anyone to show them identification of citizenship some of them will probably take advantage of it.
I had a hard time trying to find an internationals press perspective on this issue because obviously it is in the United States, but I was curious of how an issue that is considered life changing locally in the United States effected others around the world. A found an article from BBC News Canada entitled, “Judge blocks Arizona’s Controversial Immigration Law.” This article starts off talking about how federal judge Susan Bolton blocked key parts of the Arizona’s immigration law hours before it took effect. Judge Bolton wrote that, “Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked.” I completely support Judge Bolton’s comments on this issue because this law is actually going against the United States Constitution by having officials question and demand information from citizens.
Those were the two main sources I could come up with in giving great detail about the issue of the Arizona Immigration Law. Another short article that I read online was on behalf of the Associated Press mentioned that Mexico along with ten other Latin America Countries wants the federal appeals court to consider looking over this new law again because they have an interest in ensuring they have reliable relations with the United States that won’t be affected by the state of Arizona. Another short article from the Associated Press that I read online was interesting to me because it was entitled, “Colorado GOP wants to copy Arizona’s immigration law.” This article basically said that Colorado Republican lawmakers sent a delegation of lawmakers to Arizona to talk about adopting a similar law in Colorado because they believe that Colorado’s economy is suffering because of illegal immigration.
In conclusion, after reading all of these articles online from local news resources to international press perspectives, I noticed that because this issue, Arizona Immigration Law is a big “local” issue not an international issue it was hard to find international press perspectives on this issue. On the other hand this issue affects people all over the world extremely because they are illegal immigrants if they try to migrate to the state of Arizona without legal identification. Therefore, I believe that different perspectives will always be printed out on all the international news resources and it’s the reader’s decision where they want to get their information from.
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