Editorial: As Arizona Went, So Goes Virginia

Editorial: As Arizona Went, So Goes Virginia
Copyright by the New York Times
Published: August 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15sun2.html?ref=opinion


Virginia has long had localized tensions over immigration: places like Prince William County and towns like Herndon where influxes of day laborers and other immigrant Latinos have been followed by police crackdowns, anti-solicitation ordinances and laws empowering the police to check people’s immigration status.

But now that Arizona has gone to unconstitutional extremes in its anti-immigration campaign, Virginia’s highest officials are trying to take their whole state farther down that dark road.

Gov. Robert McDonnell and the attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, both Republicans, are leading the charge. Mr. McDonnell is pushing to expand the authority of the state police to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Cuccinelli — who signed on to an amicus brief supporting Arizona’s immigration law — recently said that Virginia’s law enforcement officers may check the immigration status of anyone they stop for any reason.

The opinion does not say such checks are required, which the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out in a letter urging local police departments to ignore it. The A.C.L.U. said the opinion cited no Virginia statute or any other state’s law, and was an invitation to racial profiling and equal-protection violations by officers who should be doing what they were trained to do — like catching criminals.

Leave aside the question of how a police officer is supposed to tell whether a person being questioned has committed a crime (crossing the border without papers) or a civil violation (overstaying a legal visa) or is just an American citizen without ID. A bigger question is why police departments would want to be roped into immigration enforcement with every stop they make. A police officer’s job is not foreign policy or border control. It’s community safety.

Police chiefs and officers across the country, particularly those who work along the border, recognize that you can’t easily protect a community that fears and shuns you. To fight crime, law enforcement needs help. It needs willing witnesses, and victims who tell the truth. It needs time and resources, which it shouldn’t waste chasing peaceable immigration violators and detaining brown-skinned citizens.

In Virginia — and in other states like Florida, where officials and candidates have been aping Arizona — creating a local dragnet for illegal immigrants is a popular slogan. It is not a solution.