Last week, the Arizona Legislature planned to vote on Senate Bill 1405, a bill that would have turned our hospital admissions and staff into de facto Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Fortunately, a tiny shred of sanity shone over Phoenix in the form of votes. The bill did not have enough support to move the measure forward.
Seeing how fast Arizona is ramping up its politically sanctioned attack on illegal immigrants, I am disturbed that so many people jumped on the bandwagon at the onset and continue to do so with little regard for the future ramifications today’s actions hold.
SB 1405 and its big brother SB 1070 are two examples of a legacy of terror and horror for which this generation will be known.
SB 1405 would have required hospital admissions officers to confirm the U.S. citizenship or legal resident status of a patient with non-emergency medical problems before admitting them.
If a patient were determined to be in the country illegally, the admissions staff would be required by state law to notify ICE. These same regulations apply to emergency room patients after being stabilized.
This does not solve anything. Rather is causes undocumented immigrants to fear going to a hospital, even when facing life-threatening conditions.
The bill for each of these patients is still passed on to the taxpayer, just as the bill for patients who are U.S. citizens or legal residents are picked up by taxpayers if patients cannot or do not pay.
The notion of blanket amnesty is one that won’t fly in Arizona. The state is too conservative for that.
If the state politicians stopped trying to scare their constituents with irrational fears of illegal immigrants chopping the heads off of people and worked to find a way to generate tax revenue from illegal immigrants, maybe we wouldn’t have a need for legislation like SB 1405.
Yet the problem will persist because undocumented immigrants are easy scapegoats. It’s easy to use them as the reason for all the problems in Arizona from crime to unemployment. Yes, I have heard conversations where immigrants have been blamed for our state’s economic situation.
They are not the sole problem. Passing more legislation forcing them out does nothing to engender support from anyone other than the kooks who are just as out of their gourds as our elected officials.
The solution is two-fold: first we, the people, must not fall for such petty and pathetic tricks of these emotional appeals.
If an elected official at the state Capitol says multiple people were beheaded in Arizona, we shouldn’t buy into it without proof, regardless of personal party affiliation. The same holds true to turning hospital personnel into ICE agents.
Secondly, we need our politicians to examine history and the treatment of disenfranchised groups, as well as the consequences of oppression based on irrational fear. It doesn’t achieve the intended outcome.
It would seem that the sponsors of SB 1405 figured the second point out last week; now it’s time for the rest of us to figure it out too.
Comments, concerns, complaints, and nasty-grams can be sent to Tyler at tjones16@asu.edu
