Speech According to the Center for Immigration

Speech

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the state of Arizona has "one of the fastest growing illegal immigrant populations in the country, increasing from 330,000 in 2000 to 560,000 by 2008." To stop the spread of illegals into the state of Arizona, governor Jan Brewer signed into law SB1070. The law, which simply "requires officials and agencies of the state and political subdivisions to fully comply with and assist in the enforcement of federal immigration laws," has come under recent and unfair attack. Even President Obama spoke out against the law, clearly overstepping his jurisdiction by interfering in state affairs. Arizona needs this bigoted, backwards law, and I'm going to tell you why.

Ethnicity

First, 80% of all illegal immigrants are from Latin America. That means they speak Spanish, are often poor, and listen to strange music. We don't want them here, and SB1070 makes that perfectly clear. They threaten the ethnic character of the United States, which was founded by European settlers.

III. Crime

Second, and perhaps most importantly, illegal immigrants are often criminals. The FBI claims that cases of violent crime in Arizona have dropped by nearly 1500 incidents between 2005 and 2008 (Castillo). That includes reported property crimes. These drops in crime occurred in spite of the fact that Arizona's state population grew by 600,000 between 2005 and 2008 (Castillo). But what does the FBI know about crime in the state of Arizona? The state of Arizona decides what causes crime in our borders, which is why Arizona residents need to invoke the powers of our state government to do what the federal government cannot: protect us from the scourge of illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants. Illegal immigrants cause a lot of crime. Some of those crimes, like the killing of the Phoenix police officers in 2007, and the killing of a rancher this year, are so severe that the state of Arizona has had enough.

Even though crime rates have dropped faster in the state of Arizona than in any other state in the nation, Governor Brewer decided that targeting illegal immigrants will help the residents of Arizona feel comfortable having a scapegoat. That scapegoat is illegal immigrants. Just like the Germans scapegoated the Jews, the residents of Arizona have the right to scapegoat people who they do not like. We need SB1070 not because it actually makes the state of Arizona safer; but because it makes racist white residents feel that Arizona is a safer place to live. The CATO institute cites Census data showing that "immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts," data that most Arizonans simply do not believe (Griswold). Arizonans on the front line know that illegal immigrants are attacking people, bringing drugs and organized crime into our state, and changing the ethnic composition of our neighborhoods. The polka music is bad enough; the wave of illegal immigrants from south of the border must be stopped and if the Obama administration is too feckless to do anything about it, then Jan Brewer will.