SB 1070 — Roundtable
Arizona is long way from St. Louis, and the states of Arizona and Missouri are no doubt pretty different. Still, the immigration debate, and the debate about Arizona’s controversial immigration statute, has become, and remains, a national topic.
The Homeland project is about learning what our community has to say about immigration. So a while back we brought five St. Louis area residents together to discuss immigration issues at Schlafly’s Tap Room in downtown St. Louis. Here is what the group had to say about the controversial Arizona SB 1070.
The group includes: Jasha McQueen Gadberry, John Beidle, Rob Scharfenburg, Catherine Nolan and Tiffany Sonnier.
And if you missed our early segments from this discussion, here’s what the group had to say about the media’s coverage of the immigration debate, and their thoughts on American culture and why it is important.
Category: Enforcement
I think the reason why the immigration issue is so complicated is because it is a part of who we are as a nation. Most of our country’s population is here because of our immigration system. We will always have an illegal immigration problem. I don’t think we can treat each state the same when it comes to immigration or any issue. Each state has there own unique set of problems. As long as the states stay within the parameters of the already existing laws, I don’t really see the problem. We are the United States (underlining United). Not the Separate States. The government will always be overwhelmed because of the bureacracy that is innate in any large organization. The individual states can certainly pick up where the central government has stopped. Let us not forget that even though US citizens break the same laws as illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants already broke the law when they intentionally avoided following our laws for legal status. I also believe that as long as companies/individuals are not given consequences for hiring illegal immigrants, illegals will continue to come here and work. Our capitalism encourages the hiring of illegals or “outsourcing” to other countries because it increases the profit margin. Plain and simple.
Hi Jazmin,
Good points. I think the issue of our economic system encouraging (or in some cases, nearly requiring) outsourced labor is a big piece of the immigration issue that hasn’t been addressed. It is a policy issue we are exploring in the Homeland series.