The Hill News

In 2010, I introduced SB1070 to the Arizona Senate with two goals: To alleviate the problems that the federal government’s failure to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws inflicted on the citizens of Arizona, and to spark a national conversation about this issue that would eventually lead the federal government to act.

Despite parts of the bill being blocked by activist lower court judges, it has already succeeded on both counts. In 2009, illegal immigrants comprised 9.8 percent of Arizona’s workforce (Pew Hispanic Center) and the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that illegals cost Arizona taxpayers $2.6 billion a year. At the same time, failure to enforce our laws led to rampant crime, Phoenix had the highest kidnapping rate in the country, and dozens of police officers and citizens were killed or maimed by illegals.

The purpose of this bill is not to indiscriminately go through Hispanic neighborhoods and ask! everyone to prove they are citizens.  Rather, SB1070 is part of Arizona’s attrition through enforcement strategy that began with 2004’s Prop 200 and 2007’s Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), which I also authored. 

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