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Somewhere Between a Rock and a Hard Place
(
And a Whole Bunch of Illegal Immigrants
Trying to Squeeze Between the Two)
We have all been there before. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, it is inevitable that it will catch up with you sooner or later. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Do I go left or go right? Should I go or should I stay? Do I speak or should I just remain silent? You are literally stuck between a rock and a hard place whereby anything that you may do will have negative consequences. Not only do we find ourselves from time to time in this unenviable quagmire on a personal level, our government is just as bad. We can’t seem to get anything done based on our system’s ineptness and inability to create policies that are not in direct conflict with other policies that already exist. Therefore, we find ourselves between a literal rock and a hard place while the very life of anything that resembles common ground has had the life sucked out of it.
As if it is not already bad enough, and to make matters even worse, we now have this ludicrous way of thinking being forced on our law enforcement and judicial systems. The recent debate on the illegal immigration laws that were recently passed by the State of Arizona have set off a show of power between Arizona and the Federal Government. More importantly, this issue has created a major sized headache for Arizona law enforcement agencies. They are the ones who will have to sort out the mess that they have been handed. It is remindful of two parents going through a divorce arguing about what a child can or cannot do. One says that you can go to the movies and the other one says that you cannot. Neither seems willing to budge and the child is caught in the middle. Based on not knowing which way to turn, and worrying about who might have the better argument, whichever decision the child makes usually turns out to be the wrong one.
Arizona has instructed their law enforcement personnel to begin enforcing the state’s new immigration laws in just a few days. The Federal Government has told them that they do not have the authority to enforce laws that are unconstitutional; in their opinion. Arizona has said that if the Federal Government had enforced the laws, they would have never created the state laws. The Federal Government says that they are going to file a lawsuit against Arizona to keep them from doing anything. And it is now turned into a real life situation of “yes we can,” and “no you can’t,” and “we’ll do it,” and “you better not.” We are now watching the shouting back and forth and school yard posturing of everyone’s lawyers that has included everything except “nanny nanny boo-boo.” We have heard from a judge this week that she will rule on the issue soon and will probably strike down some of Arizona’s new immigration law, but probably not all of it. All the while, cops from Phoenix to Tempe are scratching their heads and wondering what they should do.
If this new law is constitutional, any police officer will enforce it just as they do the hundreds and hundreds of laws on the book that they have the authority to enforce. However, it is unfair to ask any police officer to enforce this law, or any law for that matter, that may be unconstitutional. Someone needs to make this determination and it does not need to be the police. This type of behavior may be okay in politics, but it is a dangerous precedent to hand off to our law enforcement and judicial systems. It is one thing when a person who is charged with a crime may not agree with the validity of the law itself. It is a far more serious breech of confidence when the very people who are sworn to uphold our laws hold that same reluctance. It is simply a recipe for disaster and a scenario that we should never visit. Injecting the police into a situation that has not fully passed or failed its constitutional muster is insane. The rock moves and the hard place moves with it. The hard place moves and the rock slides over the gap. All the while, one illegal immigrant after another is trying to wedge in between the two as they posture for position.
There is no doubt that the issue of illegal immigration in this country is a major problem. It’s sort of like acne. It probably could have been resolved easily when it was first noticed as a small pimple on the face of our country, but by choosing to just ignore it the problem has now festered to the point that it requires some professional lancing. Unfortunately, our governments both on the state and federal level have asked the police to be the needle that will prick the boil. And, oh yeah, once you do how about cleaning up the mess as well? Nice!
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