RUSSELL PEARCE

I wasn’t able to attend Thursday’s legislative candidate forum for District 18 in Mesa. But reading between the lines in Tribune writer Sonu Munshi’s coverage, I think Pearce still wishes he was running for Congress this fall instead of the Arizona Senate.

Pearce seriously considered challenging incumbent Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., in the primary because Flake has been a proponent of immigration reform that would provide an opportunity for otherwise law-abiding immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally to remain here. But Pearce found out when he tested the waters that running for Congress is a whole different ballgame than running for the Legislature. Access to cash, and lots of it, is much more important in a congressional campaign, although some East Valley Democrats want to believe I don’t know what I talking about.

Flake’s warchest is well-stocked and Pearce learned he would have a tough time matching it. So Pearce ran for the Legislature again, and even took public campaign funds to help fend off the heavy attacks from business-friendly critics.

Meanwhile, Flake isn’t taking any chances and he has launched a new fundraising tool called the Pork Parade. Technically, the site is supposed to be devoted to building support against pork-barrel spending and earmarks. But given its emphasis on the use of Twitter and its relative lack of content, the real purpose likely will be to build up Flake’s personal image and gather contact information for future donation appeals, ala Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

TOM HORNE

Arizona schools superintendent Tom Horne had a startling annoucement today: some school districts adopted the state’s new English immersion program for Spanish-speaking students a year early, and these districts already have made dramatic improvements in bringing those students into the mainstream.

A news release from Horne’s office today says these school districts have at least doubled their pace for removing students from the status of English language learners. That includes the Florence Unified School District, which went from a  “reclassification” rate of 15 percent to 38 percent this fall.

Horne has emerged as the leading champion of immersing ELL students in four hours of language instruction each school day until they can read and write as well as their classmates who learned English as their first language. Horne has clashed publicly with school superintendents around the state, including Mesa’s Debra Duvall, who claim the state has pushed an untested program too fast with too little funding.

Unless the results reported today are a short-term aberration, this is great news for taxpayers as the state spends a signficiant amount of extra money to help ELL students — but the state is still trapped in a federal lawsuit that is seeking even more funding. Horne soon might be able to crow about finally implementing the intent of state voters who approved an English-immersion initiative in 2000 as a better way to address the problem.

Related story:
ELL problems go beyond funding

JOHN SHADEGG

   Democrats are trying to score political points against Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., for a recent quote to a health care industry lobbying group picked up by the Yellow Sheet from Arizona Capitol Times. Here’s the quote as printed in a news release from Shadegg’s Democratic opponent, Bob Lord:

   “It’s important to note, Shadegg said, that contrary to what many believe, no one in this country goes without health care.”

   Lord’s campaign manager goes on to say this shows Shadegg doesn’t understand the crisis facing many Americans.
   But Shadegg made an accurate statement that puts the debate about the future of health care in some context. I constantly turn away comments that claim some white American can’t get any health care because “illegal Mexicans” are getting it all for free at the emergency rooms. The truth is every American can receive a wide variety of medical tests and treatments from emergency rooms at reduced costs or for free if they don’t have health insurance and can’t pay for it on their own. (Illegal immigrants can only receive true emergency care).
   It’s expensive, and treating emergency rooms like a doctor clinic is creating lots of problems for the health care system. But Americans simply aren’t denied live-saving care for a lack of money or health insurance.
Update:
   Sarah Muench, Bob Lord’s communication director, sent me a response to this post and she gave me permission to put it up as well. Here’s her response in full:
   “I understand your argument, but there are millions of Americans who don’t have access to any kind of real health care. There’s a big difference between emergency treatment and real health care. Treatment at an emergency room may include a wide variety of medical tests and emergency care, but when it comes down to someone who has a long-term illness like cancer, that person can’t go to the emergency room for
chemotherapy. And that’s what’s so disappointing about Shadegg’s argument, just think of the 47 million Americans and 9 million children out there without access to real health care. John McCain recognizes this and notes that at any given moment there are tens of
millions of Americans who lost their health insurance because they lost or left a job. Friends of mine have younger siblings who had cancer before they were 10 years old. If they did not have real health care, they would not have gotten the treatment they needed.”

From left: Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and state House Speaker Jim Weiers at a news conference Monday (Capitol Media Services).

   There go those hopes of seeing the next state budget adopted anytime soon.
Stalled budget talks are likely to get caught up in the immediate fallout from Gov. Janet Napolitano’s decision to take away $1.6 million that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been using for illegal immigration enforcement.
   One lawmaker with at least some influence was standing next to Arpaio Monday at a hastily called news conference to protest Napolitano’s act. Another lawmaker who knows a thing or two about state budgets was the primary champion of Arpaio’s funding last year.
   I expect both of them to rattle all sorts of cages in and around the Capitol unless Napolitano does the unlikely and changes her mind about using the $1.6 million to fund a new statewide fugitive warrant task force. Certainly, Republican leaders will try telling Napolitano face-to-face she has to give Arpaio his money back if she wants budget negotiations to go anywhere.
   The governor, a Democrat, has won most budget showdowns with Republicans in the past. Even with the public volatility of the illegal immigration debate, I wouldn’t bet against her this time either. For those who can’t get things done without a deadline, the state budget has to be adopted by June 30 to avoid any risk of violating the state constitution.

Sen. Jon Kyl

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wasn’t happy about a recent Tribune editorial urging caution in further expansion of the occasions when government can forcibly record a person’s DNA for future reference. The Tribune Editorial Board was reacting to a Kyl-sponsored law that directs the federal government to grab DNA samples from illegal immigrants before they are deported.

Kyl publicly tried to lay a guilt trip on us opinion writers by repeating his argument that the Chandler Rapist would have been caught sooner if DNA from the current defendant had been recorded when he was deported years earlier.

Of course, a close reading of the Tribune editorial will tell you that we weren’t objecting to this specific law, but to government’s eagerness to embrace DNA as a magic tool for solving more and more problems regardless of possible loss of personal and medical privacy.

But Kyl’s main point relies on flawed reasoning – there’s no guarantee that a DNA sample would have led to an immediate arrest after the Chandler Rapist attacked his first victim.

Monday’s news about a possible serial killer in Mesa illustrates this. Mesa police have used a national DNA database to link two murders and a violent assault to the same person. But the police still don’t know who they are looking for, and Police Chief George Gascon held a news conference Monday specifically to enlist the public’s help in identifying possible suspects.

As for the man accused of being the Chandler Rapist, obviously he already was doing his best to avoid the police without fleeing the area. Even if the police had been able to connect crime-scene evidence to a name in a DNA database, that wouldn’t have automatically put a suspect in jail. Investigators still would have had to track the man down.

DNA samples aren’t a silver bullet for criminals. They are another tool for law enforcement, one that must be used carefully and never should be treated causally by policymakers.

Gov. Janet Napolitano (at www.nga.org)

Recent political events in New Jersey and Arizona illustrate just how strange the whole national debate over illegal immigration has become.

As you’ve probably heard, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano on Monday vetoed HB2807, which would have required local police and sheriff’s offices to develop policies for working with the federal government to identify and deport illegal immigrants. The bill encouraged local law enforcement to receive federal immigration enforcement training, generally referred to as the 287(g) program. Napolitano said in her veto message that HB2807 guaranteed the state would pay for such training if the federal government didn’t, which could have cost $100 million when the state faces a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall.

But Napolitano long has been once of those leaders who argue immigration enforcement should be solely a federal requirement and local police should focus on preventing or solving state and local crimes. The governor probably took some solace from comments offered Sunday by Christopher Christie, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Christie pointed out that simply being in the United States without permission is a violation of federal law, but not a crime.

Such immigrants caught in the United States are allowed to be detained only long enough for their status to be confirmed, and then they must be deported as soon as possible. Christie has gotten a lot of criticism from people who want stricter immigration enforcement at all levels, and don’t really care what the law actually says.

 Ironically, last year, New Jersey State Attorney General Anne Milgram ordered all police agencies in her state to check the immigration status of everyone charged with a state felony or DUI. That’s Christie standing next Milgram at the August news conference during which she announced the immigration enforcement policy that’s similar to what HB2807 would have required.

Rep. Russell Pearce
My blog has been quiet for a week as I took some vacation time and enjoyed some of the best outdoor sights of the Arizona springtime. Now that I’m back to work, I’m detecting a whiff of hypocrisy from Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, over a legislative proposal for Arizona to launch a new foreign guest-worker program.

As Capitol Media Services reported in Tuesday’s Tribune, Pearce is opposing the scope of a bipartisan measure that would allow Arizona to test a new kind of guest-worker program for low-skill workers that has been talked about for years in Washington but hasn’t been approved by Congress.

Pearce says most Arizona businesses that want such foreign workers simply aren’t willing to pay enough to attract U.S. residents to take these jobs. But oddly, Pearce is willing to admit the
U.S. has a true shortage of domestic labor in farming. Remember when folks from Pearce’s camp on illegal immigration derided Sen. John McCain’s comment that there aren’t American workers to harvest lettuce in Yuma even if they were paid $50 an hour?

Pearce apparently believes there aren’t enough Americans to farm and ranch, but somehow they are just waiting to be offered the right wages to build homes, ditch ditches and fill other manual labor posts.

The truth is the American economy already is heavily dependent on foreign labor because of declining U.S. birth rates. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated in 2005 that half of all jobs created here over the prior 15 years went to foreign workers.

Pearce and his supporters can pretend all they want that Americans will start taking manual labor jobs as wages and prices rise. But they can’t change the physical reality that there aren’t enough bodies out there to fill all of the jobs that our economy has been creating. And one of the fastest ways to strangle a robust economy is cut off or severely limit its supply of labor.

Michael CrowArizona State University president Michael Crow said Friday he came to the aid of Arizona high school graduates who have to pay expensive, out-of-state tuition rates because they aren’t in the U.S. legally. But Crow also is essentially thumbing his nose at Arizona voters who said overwhelming last year they didn’t want higher education tax dollars to support such people.In the 2006 general election, voters approved Proposition 300, which requires all state universities and community colleges to verify legal residency for anyone receiving in-state tuition as well as tuition waivers and other public scholarships.Crow basically bragged at a luncheon Friday about a new financial aid program that helps some illegal immigrants attend ASU anyway, according to an Associated Press story in Sunday’s Tribune. The program connects people who have Arizona high school diplomas with privately funded scholarships so they can afford to pay out-of-state tuition. Crow estimated 150 to 200 students have received help so far to the tune of $1.8 million.Prop. 300 was tough issue last year for the Tribune Editorial Board. On the one hand, such a policy punishes people who are in the United States through no fault of their own. Usually, such students were brought here by their parents at a young age, educated in Arizona schools and immersed in American culture. And part of that culture these days is most high school graduates go on to some kind of higher education.On the other hand, it makes sense that limited government resources should be directed to U.S. citizens and legal residents who have better chance of staying here for the long haul. (An illegal immigrant in college, even with an Arizona high school diploma, has a good chance of being deported as we’ve seen with some high-profile cases recently.)The Editorial Board said Prop. 300 strikes a decent compromise. Immigrants could still attend a state-funded college. But they would have to figure out how to pay for tuition themselves without extra assistance from state taxpayers. In-state tuition is heavily subsidized by the state, which is why that issue was targeted along with tax-funded financial assistance.By using only private scholarships, ASU’s financial aid program doesn’t appear to violate Prop. 300. But the use of university personnel and other resources to specifically help immigrant students find and receive those scholarships certainly violates the voters’ intent.Crow might think Prop. 300 is mean-spirited and counterproductive. Heck, I’m not that fond of it myself. But Crow has a duty as a state official to respect policies approved by voters and taxpayers who fund his institution. He should not look for means to circumvent the law and then boast about it.Besides, he’s probably done more damage to overall future of immigrant students. With the passage of Prop. 300, it appeared that immigration enforcement activists were satisfied and would leave alone those who still could afford to attend college.But the next step could be to ban illegal immigrants from attending a state-funded college altogether. Given what Crow has done, I won’t be surprised if that idea is pushed hard in time for the 2008 general election.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (right)Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard has taken a lot of criticism for opposing the Protect Arizona Now initiative in 2004 before it was approved by voters as Proposition 200, and then for taking a far narrower view of the law than some immigration enforcement activists. But time and again, Goddard and his office have ably defended the voters’ intent in court from attacks offered by immigrant rights advocates who want Prop. 200 thrown out entirely.Goddard won another victory Wednesday as a U.S. district judge again upheld the photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements related to registering to vote and to casting ballots in person, Capitol Media Services is reporting.This is at least third time the attorney general’s office has convinced the federal courts to uphold this portion of Prop. 200 (plus receiving approval from the Justice Department before the law went into effect). As far as I know, Goddard’s office has successfully defeated every challenge to his legal interpretation of the measure. If Goddard really wanted to undercut Prop. 200, it’s likely he would have settled at least some of the lawsuits filed against the state instead of continuing to defend the law in court.Besides various legal challenges intended to block the law, state Republican Party chairman Randy Pullen is still pursuing a separate case in which he argues the state is being too restrictive about what "public benefits" require proof of legal residency under another section of Prop. 200.The people who wrote Prop. 200 would prefer to deny almost any government service or benefit to illegal immigrants. But they knew the federal courts would strike down such law if they tried to apply to grade-school education and emergency health care, and they were worried about obscure places in federal law that might protect other state or local government programs as well. So they tried to make Prop. 200 as broad as possible with a general reference to restricting access to "public benefits," but recognize that its provisions don’t apply to those areas where federal law has intervened. But the language they used is so tortured that even the leading proponents during the 2004 election campaign couldn’t agree on what it really means.Once Prop. 200 became law, Goddard decide to take a narrow interpretation of "public benefits" in an effort to keep the law intact. The problem is Arizona accepts federal funding for so much of what it does (and all of the strings that are attached), that Goddard said only a handful of minor general welfare programs were affected. The state Legislature has had additional areas in the past few years, primarily state-funded child care and college tuition. But Pullen insists the state can, and should, apply Prop. 200 to more government services.Originally, Goddard’s office convinced a Superior Court judge that Pullen didn’t have a good reason to file a lawsuit and to dismiss the case out of hand. But the Arizona Court of Appeals later ruled that Pullen should have the opportunity to make his case before a trial judge.Pullen is actually suing Gov. Janet Napolitano and the state agencies he thinks should be enforcing Prop. 200. But the validity of Goddard’s legal reasoning is at the heart of the dispute. So far, Goddard’s approach has been validated by the courts. On this issue, Goddard appears to be doing the job that voters expect from the attorney general.

In the past year, one of the subtexts of the immigration debate has been the issue of children born to foreign workers, both legal and illegal. The traditional interpretation of the 14th Amendment has been virtually anyone born within the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen with full privileges and voting rights when they come of age, regardless of whom their parents are. Critics contend this has become a powerful incentive for pregnant mothers to enter the U.S. any way they can. Once their children are born, foreign parents automatically move up the priority list when applying for permanent residency visas or "green cards." Many critics use the somewhat pejorative term "anchor babies" to describe this situation.A possible solution would be to amend the U.S. Constitution to remove automatic citizenship for children born to foreign nationals, which would mirror the policy of many other countries around the world. However, passage of such an amendment would be rather difficult and hasn’t garnered much political support to date.So some critics have suggested we should re-examine the common understanding of the 14th Amendment. In a historical context, automatic citizenship was supposed to apply to former slaves and their descendants, and native Indians, not to people who migrate to the U.S. after the amendment passed, the argument goes.After giving the issue a great deal of thought, I have to admire the creativity of the argument but have come to conclude it’s fatally flawed. Here’s why.First, consider the first sentence of the 14th Amendment that’s the focus of this issue:"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."The key phrase is "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The traditional belief is that Congress wanted to make clear that children of foreign diplomats who might be born here don’t gain immediate U.S. citizenship. Foreign dignitaries who, by treaty, are protected by diplomatic immunity are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. and so are excluded by the amendment.The federal courts have ruled the same phrase also protects children of U.S. diplomats and those serving in the military overseas. Since those U.S. citizens are still "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. government when serving abroad, any children born in a foreign country immediately gain U.S. citizenship.Some legal experts believe the phrase also can apply to just about every foreign national in the U.S. Their position is easiest to understand in relation to illegal immigrants. Those who enter the country without permission are entitled to none of the privileges of a U.S. citizen. Illegal immigrants should be afforded the same humane rights of any person (emergency medical care, due process of law, etc.), but the only authority the U.S. should have over them is to punish them for any crimes committed against the U.S. and then to deport them, these critics contend.Some believe "not subject to the jurisdiction thereof" also could apply to legal foreign tourists and immigrants, at least those who don’t have permanent residency visas. Such legal visitors are here strictly at the benevolence of the U.S. and can be ordered to leave at anytime for any reason. Their argument is "subject to the jurisdiction" implies someone who not only must answer to the U.S. government but also is entitled to certain rights and privileges beyond humane treatment. The right to live here permanently and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship might be the touchstones of this approach. Children of a foreign national lacking those two rights wouldn’t be "subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. government and therefore wouldn’t gain automatic citizenship.I think the flaw in the argument as applied to legal foreign visitors is somewhat obvious. If they aren’t subject to U.S. authority, then how can the U.S. government grant them permission to be live and work here temporarily in the first place? The two would seem to go hand-in-hand.But what about illegal immigrants? The real problem with this new interpretation of the 14th Amendment is it would treat such people a lot like foreign diplomats. Being subject to the authority of the U.S. touches on a lot of issues other than citizenship for children. We wouldn’t be able to force illegal immigrants to comply with any contracts they sign, demand they pay their debts or sue them for wrongful injury. We couldn’t compel them to pay taxes on any income they earn (which U.S. citizens are supposed to do, even if their income comes from illegal activities). We couldn’t draft them into the military during a foreign invasion or a time of national crisis.I don’t know if illegal immigrants would be willing to give up citizenship for their children if they could forego these other obligations as well. But I imagine many U.S. citizens would have trouble with the trade off. And it’s not like we can take away automatic citizenship for children but demand these other obligations without a constitutional amendment. Either illegal immigrants are subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. or they aren’t. I don’t think there’s much ground in-between.