The Nebraska Legislature will consider a bill this week that would adopt an Arizona-style immigration law, making it a misdemeanor to be in the United States without documentation and requiring law enforcement officials to check a person’s paperwork if the officer has “reasonable suspicion” that the person could be in the country illegally.
Regardless of how you feel about the sticky immigration debate that has fired up the last few years, the fact is this bill is not even a viable option to reducing the number of undocumented immigrants in Nebraska.
In a story on the front page of today’s Daily Nebraskan, Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady bluntly says that passing this law would not only make his job harder, but wouldn’t even accomplish its goal.
“I fail to see this as a good return on investment,” Casady recently wrote in a detailed, two-page letter to Lincoln’s finance director. “For my own tax dollar, I would prefer that we focus efforts on the deportation of aliens who have already been convicted of crimes … I am always concerned with unfunded mandates that increase our cost of doing business without new revenue to offset these costs.”
On top of the fact that the bill would require much more work for law enforcement without providing extra funding, this kind of law could also bring outside consequences. Casady pointed out that it could increase fear and resentment of police officers, especially among immigrant communities, and that victims could even become afraid to report crimes for fear of getting their papers checked.
All of these points are concerning, of course. But what is more concerning is that our lawmakers — seven of whom have signed on to the bill so far — are supporting this bill despite the clear arguments against it. If any of them talked to an expert — the police chief who would know whether this law would even be enforceable — they would realize once and for all that this is a bad idea.
Did they not talk to Casady, or did they ignore his advice? Either way, some of our legislators need to be more conscientious about the implementation of their ideals, not just the way they wish things could be.