Lessons from Northern Virginia for Arizona

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I was driving through a small town in Maryland. I was at a four-way stop in my brand new Ford Explorer. To my left was a police officer in his cruiser. The light turned green and I drove on. Within a half a mile, I was pulled over by the cop. He asked to see my license and registration, which I presented to him without question, and he let me go shortly afterward. I don't know why I was pulled over that day. Was it my new, black SUV with the tinted windows that somehow raised his suspicion? Was it that I looked like someone who might have stolen the vehicle? This wasn't a checkpoint where everyone was being stopped, nor did I commit any traffic violation. So was this some kind of errant ethnic profiling in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks? I can tell you that as an American citizen, it was a very unsettling feeling for me.

In essence, this is what is wrong with the new Arizona law that tries to curb illegal immigration based on how people look rather than how they actually behave. This was the same problem that Prince William County, Va., faced in 2007 with its push for tougher laws that eventually had to be curtailed. If you get a chance to see the film 9500 Liberty, you will see what these types of laws do to communities. In Prince William County and Manassas, Va., even the police chief was against the tougher laws for reasons he outlined to a county commission that didn't seem to listen. The chief made a strong case about how the law would make policing tougher and actually result in more crime.

Eventually, the county's economy began to collapse because so many people left the area. Hispanic kids, even the ones here legally, weren't going to school out of fear of being targeted by authorities. Community policing efforts became fractured because of a lack of trust. This is what Arizona will face on a state-wide basis.

I have included the 9500 Liberty trailer here, but it doesn't totally capture the complexities of what went wrong in Northern Virginia when misguided politicians tried to push the law to its limits. The documentary is currently being shown in various movie houses in Arizona. Perhaps it will provide some insights on why laws like this often make matters worse and why the authors of these bills sometimes have less than honest or honorable intentions.

There are functional and fair laws already on the books to address certain problems created by illegal aliens, or anyone else, who violate the law. Federal enforcement and immigration policies do need to be beefed up to curtail the flow of illegal immigrants from all countries, not just ones from south of the border. But Arizona, like Prince William County, should not take matters into its own hands by creating laws that go against common decency. Arizona has embarrassed itself enough in the past by doing things like not recognizing Martin Luther King Day. And it paid an economic and moral price for it.