| Issue #36, December 1, 2006 |
SUPREME COURT RULES ON IMMIGRANT RIGHTS
By Dan Rattiner
Last autumn, an officer from the East Hampton Police Department drove down to the railroad station in that town and simply parked his squad car in one of the parking spaces and sat in it with the motor running. He did this every day for about a week. And when it had the desired effect, he stopped doing it.
The event had been widely publicized ahead of time. And afterwards, there was much praise heaped on this officer who had done what he was ordered to do.
It had indeed been a difficult task. Not so much because there might have been dangers involved, though it might have angered a building contractor or two, but because it was a dicey thing that might have been on the edges of the law.
Ostensibly, the officer was down at the train station to write down the license plate numbers of the contracters linking up with one of the several dozen people — mostly illegal immigrants from countries south of the border — standing around or leaning against the split rail fence there, waiting to be offered work. If the price were agreed upon, which would be a flat fee of $150 a day or thereabouts, then the worker would get into the car and drive off with the building contractor to help with painting, carpentry, roofing or landscaping. Everyone needs money. Everybody has to work.
You might wonder why these building contractors would simply not be arrested for this. The reason is no crime had been committed. It is legal to pick up people at the railroad station. And of course, it is also legal to have a police car down there with its motor running. What was of questionable legality was whether a police officer could sit there fishing for trouble, taking license plate numbers with great fanfare in the suspicion that there might be a crime going on at a later time when the contractor started the illegal immigrant working (that’s illegal) or when the contractor failed to pay the worker properly by providing social security, disability and so forth and so on (that’s illegal).
Apparently you can’t do this kind of fishing. Last Monday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that authorities cannot harass people, interfere with a business transaction going on in a public place or, most especially, target a certain group. They had reviewed a case brought to them from Mamaroneck, New York, where police ordered groups of Latinos out from where they were peacefully congregating in a park (awaiting building contractors) and moved them into a certain nearby lot, then at a later date told them they couldn’t congregate in that lot either and there was no other place where they could stand around. They began ticketing illegal immigrants and those picking them up in either the lot or the park. And in short order these people went out of town. The court ruled that all tickets and fines in these cases were to be thrown out. You cannot harass people for being Latino. And you cannot harass people for what they might or might not do.
In a related matter, the Supreme Court also threw out a case in Redondo Beach, California where people, mostly illegal immigrants, were down at the railroad station and, when somebody pulled up, would go to the car window to see if the occupant was looking for work. The court ruled this was a legal activity, asking things of strangers politely in such a setting, and it didn’t matter whether they were asking about work or asking for directions. It was not “soliciting,” which was what the police ticketed these people for. And even if it were, the enforcement was selective, against Latinos. You cannot accuse people through selective enforcement.
In still another related case, the Supreme Court threw out all violations and tickets given out when police in Freehold, New Jersey entered homes without the residents’ consent in an effort to weed out illegal Latino tenants. This was racial profiling, big time.
So these were the decisions, last Monday, by the now right-leaning Supreme Court. You have to live with it. On the other hand, in still ANOTHER related decision, the Supreme Court ruled that you cannot force a town to build a hiring hall for anybody just because they are all standing out in the cold.
So you can’t win. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
The reality here is, that without any forethought, our Federal Government simply let huge numbers of Latin American citizens in across our southern border illegally without making any serious effort to stop them, monitor them, or arrange for their orderly admission to this country and this has been going on for a decade. They did this to assuage big business, which wanted to be able to compete in the world economy and needed workers to fill the factories at very little pay in order to do so.
The Feds simply failed to enforce their laws.
As for the legal citizens of the local communities around this country, they have been stuck with more competition for jobs and also been stuck with what to do about this. The Supreme Court has just reminded us that there are such things as human rights, and people, whoever they are, have them as soon as they reach American soil.
Our country has a big heart. It isn’t rocket science for legal citizens here to display that big heart, or if they can’t, at least to accept that this is the law of our land and why people have come and continue to come here in the first place.
President Bush may not have done much right during his presidency, in my personal opinion anyway, but he did do right in ordering the building of a fence at the border to stop or slow the flow, and he did do right by asking Congress to pass laws to give these immigrants who did get in illegally a five to ten year pathway toward citizenship, which Congress has so far failed to do. Perhaps that will come later.
It is not any illegal immigrant’s fault if they can just walk across the border to a better life, at least to be welcomed by businessmen everywhere.
In an odd way, there has been a big benefit to having twenty million illegal immigrants in this country. With their work ethic and modest pay demands, our businesses have once again begun to thrive and are able to compete. This surge happens every time there is a new wave of poor people immigrating here. And now, as we have done before, we have to shut off the faucet for a while. We are FULL.
As for us locally, I continue to believe that we need to help those who have come here, however, they did come here. They are human beings. We need to enforce laws about overcrowded housing, we need to enforce laws that require workers to receive benefits, we need to enforce laws that require people to not behave criminally and we need to do so in a non-selective manner. And, whether we like it or not, after it happens, not before.
Elsewhere in this paper, you will read about a man who has just been convicted and sentenced for having sexually attacked women on the Hamptons beaches as they walked alone during the summer of 2004. Turns out he is an illegal immigrant. I submit that people in one group are no better or worse than those in any other group. Others will say that this shows, incorrectly, in my opinion, that this one group from south of the border is worse than others.
In fact, the police chiefs tell this newspaper that crime per capita out here is down, way down, from what it had been before this wave of illegal immigration to the Hamptons. Does that mean that Latinos, who now comprise 20% of the population, are a more peaceable people than anybody else? Probably not.
They may be, however, as a group, more careful not to break any laws, though. If they do get picked up for any infraction at all, they run the risk of getting deported. That’s not what they came to America for.
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