The Arizona Immigration Law is fair and reasonable

In last round, Pro often used faulty logic and misinterpreted many of my arguments. I will point these instances out throughout my response. ========== MY OPPONENT'S ARGUMENTS ========== ----- 1 ----- The premise of my scenario comparing a white man and Hispanic man, respectively, had to do with the nature of nonviolent, unserious crimes. If a homicide was the crime in question, the appearance of the perpetrator wouldn't matter. A murder is much more serious than the possibility of being in this country illegally. However, when it comes to a minor crime, much more would be at stake (in comparison) for the perpetrator if he or she is suspected to be illegal. Also, my opponent needs to understand that in judging the reasonability of a law, potential consequences must be considered, especially when it comes to whether or not the law will be justly enforced. Consider the Jim Crow laws in the South. These laws advocated separate but EQUAL accommodations. However, were these accommodations actually enforced so they would be equal? Of course not. This shows that judging the reality of a law is more important than its intent on paper. ----- 2 ----- A law can't be fair if the federal law it is trying to uphold hasn't been shown to be fair in the first place. One of Pro's main points of argumentation is that the law is fair and reasonable because it upholds Federal law. That is not sufficient. In order for Arizona's law to be fair and reasonable, Federal law must also be fair and reasonable. Saying Federal law is reasonable because the Federal government says so (a. k. a. the Supreme Court) is just using circular logic. ----- 3 ----- See #2. ----- 4 ----- My opponent has misinterpreted the Australian study and my analysis. The thesis of the study was NOT that we should have an open border policy. We SHOULD supervise who comes in and out of the country. However, the main focal points of Arizona's law has to do with what we will do with the illegal immigrants already residing in Arizona. The current law says to kick them out. The Australian study says that will be economically devastating. Instead, making the illegal immigrants currently in Arizona citizens would be much more economical. The Arizona law strives to do the opposite. The Australian study has nothing to do with controlling the border itself. ------5------ "Con claims he has a better solution to immigration. That is not part of this debate. The debate is solely about whether the Arizona Law is fair and reasonable, not whether something else might be better. " My point in introducing the option of amnesty was to show that there is a solution besides (a) doing nothing with the illegal immigrant population, and (b) forcing all the illegal immigrants out of the country. "Even if there is a better immigration policy, it still reasonable for a state to defer to the Federal government in deciding immigration policy, and to help enforce that policy through fair means. " As I have shown, if a Federal law isn't fair and reasonable in the first place (see my Contention 1), any state law enforcing that Federal law can neither be fair not reasonable. "Con states that Arizona expects immigrants to panic. He already contradicted that in (1) above when he correctly asserted the Arizona objective was attrition. " How is that a contradiction? The objective of causing immigrants to panic and to leave is the definition of attrition: reducing the amount of illegal immigrants in the state. My opponent also believes saying that "enforcing immigration law will cause immigrants to hide" can be said for any law. Yes, it can be said for any law that hasn't been enforced. These immigrants have been allowed to break the law and come into the U. S. for decades without receiving any consequences. Think about the Prohibition. When alcohol was illegal, did people just stop doing what had always been tolerated? Of course not, they were simply driven underground. The same can be said with Arizona's new law. "I don't think that the main objective of the law is attrition. " Now my opponent contradicts himself, because he said in Round 1 "he [Con] correctly asserted the Arizona objective was attrition. " ========== MY CASE ========== I have repeatedly shown that when a law has not been enforced for decades, simply threatening to enforce it now will do more harm than good. I'm actually glad my opponent brought up Reagan's plan of amnesty (with the condition of enforcement) because the Arizona law does the opposite. Let me be clear on this: there is a difference between how we enforce the U. S. -Mexican border and what we do with immigrants already in the U. S. I agree with a policy of enforcing the border. However, Arizona's law mainly has to do with immigrants already in the state. In that respect, the law's policy is to REMOVE undocumented workers from the state. ---------- Economic Implication ---------- Removing illegal immigrants already in the state will be economically devastating, as I showed with the Australian study, The study has nothing to do with border enforcement, just with immigrants already here. It shows that removing the immigrants from Arizona, which the law's aim, is not the sensible (i. e. reasonable) thing to do, thus negating the resolution. The reasonable thing to do would be the opposite, in other words to make these immigrants citizens of the United States. This way they will have all the responsibilities of everyone else: paying taxes, jury duty, etc. They will be able to work the same jobs, but they can now be out in the open about it. ========== CONCLUSION ========== Arizona's law is only fair in the legal sense. It certainly isn't reasonable, by both a moral, practical and economic standpoint. The resolution has been negated.