Illegal immigrants have broken the law, so shouldn't the police be able to investigate and arrest them? That's the argument for the CLEAR Act (Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act; not to be confused with the Clean Efficient Automobiles Resulting from Advanced Car Technologies Act, also called CLEAR). A hearing will be held on this bill on October 1.
The logic of the pro-CLEAR argument is weak. Income tax evasion is also a violation of the law, but we don't ask local law enforcement authorities to investigate the tax status of everyone in the community. That's what the IRS is for. Similarly, immigration violations are already investigated by the INS (now part of the Department of Homeland Security). But CLEAR's flaws go even beyond this.
There are an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Even the INS, whose full time job is enforcing immigration law, can't keep up with it. How, then, can we expect already over-burdened local police departments to do so?
CLEAR also requires that illegal immigrants be entered in the National Crime Information Center database. Again this raises the question, what do we want the police spending their time on? Criminals who pose a danger to others, or people who have over-stayed their visas? The police already have authority over immigrants who commit crimes; that is not the problem here. In fact, the problem is the opposite. Instead of focusing on criminal, or terrorist, immigrants, the police will spend most of their time on undocumented workers and will not be able to concentrate their efforts where they are really needed.
An additional problem is that despite the complexity of immigration law (ever made an error on your tax form? Make an error on your immigration forms and now the police will be after you), CLEAR does not require nor fund training for police in the very immigration laws that they would be required to enforce. Hello?
The funding for the new enforcement itself will come in part from fees paid by visa applicants, thus making legal immigrants bear the cost of illegal immigration, and in part from assets seized from illegal immigrants, thus serving as an incentive to police to arrest as many illegal immigrants as they can. No direct funding is provided from the Department of Homeland Security or taken from tax revenues.
With a huge new burden of duties coming down on them, and very little funding to support it, it's not surprising that many local law enforcement agencies oppose CLEAR. However, they had best be careful. If they refuse to enforce immigration law, their federal funding will be cut under CLEAR. Seems the Bush Adminstration has learned its lesson from all the anti-Patriot Act ordinances being passed by local governments. This is especially ironic coming from "states rights" Republicans.
Opponents of CLEAR have pointed to several additional problems with the bill. Immigrants who are victims of or witnesses to crimes will fear to report these crimes to the police for fear that they themselves will end up in jail instead. Communities will actually become less safe than they are now, as fewer criminals are caught. Additionally, CLEAR is likely to result in increased racial, ethnic, and religious profiling as minorities are singled out for investigation of their immigration status.
CLEAR is a bad implementation of a bad idea. It will overburden local police and have the effect of increasing rather than reducing crime. Our immigration system is broken, but this is not the way to fix it.
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