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: Governing Through Crime

But its Illegal! Immigration and the False Premise of Crime Control

By Jonathan Simor

The most alarming trend in this election year is the growing body of sentiment that any effort to respond to the plight of millions of undocumented non-citizens working in the United States, other than by arresting and deporting them, constitutes an abandonment of the rule of law. Although the federal government backed off of a recent effort to heighten the criminalization of undocumented workers, state and municipal efforts are producing a growing body of mostly punitive laws. Arizona's new law punishing businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens with fines and eventual loss of their business license is typical and that in a state that depends on aliens, many of them undocumented, to sustain its large agricultural industry. (Read Randal Archibald's story on the Arizona law in the NYT)But just because its illegal, does not mean that the problem of undocumented foreign workers is primarily a problem of crime...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on December 14, 2007 (boomark / email).