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Force Our Leaders to Act Arizona Republic Anyone listening and reading about Proposition 200 these past few months would have a tough time understanding all the hysteria, especially the dire predictions emanating from business, labor and government organizations. While no citizen initiative is perfect, nothing about Proposition 200 conflicts with a single federal law, or would endanger public health or safety. The initiative merely requires that Arizona enforce current restrictions on access to public benefits by illegal aliens and ensures that only those qualified to vote may do so. The need for Proposition 200 is keen. Arizonans are paying more than $1 billion a year to cover costs associated with illegal immigration, and even Sen. John McCain, who opposes Prop. 200, admits that voters are right to be frustrated and angry over the federal government's failure to do the job. So why the fuss? Why would both business and labor oppose something so clearly in the public interest? Because both have a vested interest in preserving the status quo that allows them to benefit economically or politically while they pass along the costs to ordinary Arizonans. For business interests, opposition to Prop. 200 comes down to simple economics. It's no secret that business groups seek to use illegal labor to control the price and leverage of today's workers. Banks now profit from international transactions associated with remittances, while the housing and retail industries profit from a growing base of consumers - even if the rest of us pay the staggering costs for health care, housing, education and the drain on scarce natural resources, like water. For organized labor, which has seen its power and influence waning for decades, organizing and representing any workers - even if they are illegal aliens - is a desperate attempt to create a constituency. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is struggling against the Sisyphean task of trying to organize workers who are themselves both illegally present and persistently undercut by successive new waves of illegal immigration. It's a losing cause, pursued by misguided professionals who ignore laws of supply and demand - with the result that wages in real terms in their industry have regressed for 20 years. The third component of the anti-Prop. 200 triumvirate are the government employees, who oppose the ballot initiative on two accounts. To say that inertia and resistance to change are characteristic of government workers would be a gross understatement. Historically, state workers do not want the responsibilities of assisting in any aspect of federal immigration law enforcement. But in a post-9/11 security environment, this bit of bureaucratic foot-dragging is too dangerous to ignore. They also oppose Prop. 200 on ideological grounds: Many state workers view the beneficiaries of government programs as their constituency, and somehow believe that if people get here, taxpayers have some moral obligation to pay for whatever new services these interlopers demand. Fortunately, the voters still have some say in the conduct of the nation's affairs. Clearly, nothing upsets the political elite and government bureaucracy more than occasionally being overruled by the voters. When, as in the case of Prop. 200, the voters threaten to crash their party, these powerful interests barely disguise their disdain and can be counted on to do everything in their power to overturn the results. A resounding victory for Proposition 200 on Tuesday, over the vociferous objections of the entrenched political and business elite, will send a clear signal that the voters' tolerance for unchecked illegal immigration has run out. |
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