In her Editor’s Desk column in the May issue, Elana Kahn-Oren made an analogy between the new law in Arizona designed to catch illegal aliens in Arizona with the laws against Jews of Europe in the 1930’s. This analogy has no basis in fact.
Firstly, the new Arizona immigration law specifically forbids racial profiling and specifically states that only the documents of people who have been stopped for suspicion of another crime will be subject to this law. In fact the new Arizona law is the exact same wording as our national law against illegal immigration.
The Jews of Europe were legal citizens of their countries, not illegal immigrants, and the law used against them was imposed by the Nazis, who had conquered Europe. There is absolutely no similarity in these situations.
The effect of the illegal alien problem in the USA is in fact opposite to Kahn-Oren’s thesis. She claims that it is the government through its laws that is harming people like our Jewish ancestors, i.e. legal immigrants.
Today thousands of immigrants wait in line for years and spend thousands of dollars to become legal USA citizens as did our ancestors, yet millions of illegals stream across our southern border.
While the legal immigrants pay taxes, the illegals use and abuse tax monies and services. The facts are that the people who are hurt most by illegal aliens are legal immigrants, people like our Jewish ancestors.
Editor’s note: On April 29, after publication of the May issue, the Arizona legislature approved and the governor signed HB2162, a provision intended to address the racial profiling concerns in SB1070. That provision mandates that police may not use race, ethnicity or national origin as a factor when deciding whom to question about their immigration status. It also stipulates suspected illegal immigrants may be questioned only during a “lawful stop” in the enforcement of another law or ordinance.
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