Born in East LA

The new Arizona immigration bill has got me thinking a lot about Cheech and Chong's Born in East LA (lyrics, trailer, movie). How does an American citizen prove that they are an American? We are not required to carry our papers. To listen to the right, drivers licenses are not acceptable (however, when I got mine I had to use a birth certificate). To listen to the birthers, a "certificate of live birth" is not enough. They probably wouldn't think that a passport is enough (the President has one). So what are the brown colored people in Arizona going to use? Some of these families have been here before Arizona was part of the US. Everyone knows that this law will be unfairly enforced on the hispanics just like in the Cheech and Chong song/ movie. What if the hispanic police officers in Arizona decide to start pulling over people for being white while driving and asking them to prove citizenship. I would think that it would be probable cause when you cannot produce the required documents. My guess is that the law would be short lived.

The reality of this situation is that the State of Arizona passed a law that is not enforceable and likely unconstitutional. It violate the equal protection clause, but with this court you never know. A better law would have been to require e-verify, which is already optional Federal law. E-verify requires the employer to verify citizenship and fill out an I-9 form.

This country does not have an immigration problem they have an employer problem. If the employers would not hire illegals there would be a lot less illegals in the country. Everyone concedes that most illegals have some type of job. Most of these jobs are in the underground economy of work for cash. Much of this work is done below minimum wage as well. I say we solve our emploer problem and go a long way towards solving the illegal immigration problem. It maynot result in the 12 million going back but it should result in many leaving.

The critics of such a proposal will say that they will stay and collect welfare. Again, where does it say that welfare payments can go to illegal immigrates. Citizenship should be checked when you sign up for benefits. N0w we just have the children born in the US to illegal parents to worry about. In these cases a path to citizenship should be made available.

It seems ridiculous that Cubans are granted citizenship immediately upon setting foot in the US whereas everyone else has to go through a lengthy process. This has got to change as well.