Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC
Anti-SB 1070 protesters in downtown Phoenix on the day the law took effect, July 29, 2010
Two years ago today, Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a bill known as SB 1070. Already, the strict anti-illegal immigration bill had caused heated debate in and out of Arizona, most notably because it would make it a misdemeanor to lack proper immigration documents in the state – and because it would empower local police to check for immigration status if they had “reasonable suspicion” that someone was in the country illegally.
Back then, I wrote about the broad implications that SB 1070 would likely have. Would there be a political ripple effect, with other states considering similar laws? Would some immigrants decide they’d had enough and leave the state? Would it change the political discourse on immigration, with politicians basing their platforms on strict policies? And if tested in court, would it hold up?
Two years later, the answer to most of those questions is a resounding yes. Save for the latter one, to be decided soon enough as SB 1070 heads to the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
In the relatively short time it has existed, SB 1070 has had a profound effect on the immigration landscape, politically and in human terms. Although four of its most controversial provisions (including the “reasonable suspicion” checks) were blocked by a federal judge in Phoenix in July 2010, just before it went into effect, the law’s implications have been broad indeed.
Here are three aspects of SB 1070′s legacy so far:
1) The ripple effect in the states
Since 2010, dozens of states have introduced their own anti-illegal immigration laws, some modeled directly after SB 1070 and written with the help of the same legal counsel. SB 1070-style laws have been enacted since in Alabama, Georgia, Utah, Indiana and South Carolina.
These new laws are just part of what’s been happening in other states. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported late last year that in 2011, there were 1,607 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees introduced in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, up from a little more than 1,400 in 2010. Bolstered by the relative success of SB 1070, immigration restriction-minded legislators in many states banded together to introduce new crackdowns.
Many bills went nowhere, but there were some bold ones introduced, including a series of bills last year intended to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of undocumented immigrants that was introduced in states like Arizona, Indiana and Iowa. Also voted down was an Arizona “omnibus” bill to deny public services to undocumented immigrants, similarly to what California’s ill-fated Proposition 187 proposed in 1994, and an Arizona bill requiring that hospitals check for patients’ immigration status.
In the states that have enacted SB 1070-style laws, all of these measures face their own court challenges. Federal judges have blocked several of these laws’ most stringent provisions, including a controversial one in Alabama that would require public schools to check the immigration status of students.
In some of these states, judges are waiting to see how the Supreme Court rules on SB 1070. The justices are to weigh whether SB 1070 is in fact preempted by federal immigration law, as the federal government has challenged. If the high court decides that enforcing immigration law is strictly a federal task, it could take the air out of the other state measures; it not, it would empower state legislators to continue with these and similar state laws.
