Today, the Independent Women’s Forum hosted a panel at Georgetown Law School entitled “The Situation in Arizona, The New Immigration Law, And Its National Implications.” At one point during the panel, in the middle of a discussion about what constitutes “reasonable suspicion,” Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh (R) admitted that “barring” a case in which someone is in an “orange jump suit” who is sneaking across the border tries to run away from the police, it’s nearly impossible to establish obvious “reasonable suspicion” that someone is in the country illegally. However, Kavanagh insisted that Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070, will not lead to racial profiling by suggesting that even he or fellow panelist Tamar Jacoby of ImmigrationWorks USA could be pulled over and questioned about their immigration status.:

KAVANAGH: Multiple facts. A Police officer will look at multiple facts [to establish reasonable suspicion]. They’ll question the person. They’ll get inconsistent answers. The person will get caught in lies. It’s a slow process of questioning an individual or making observations.

JACOBY: – And am I ever going to get questioned? Are you ever going to get questioned? People who look like us?

KAVANAGH: Possibly.

Watch it:

Essentially, Kavanagh is suggesting that anyone who is pulled over for speeding or a broken tail light should be prepared to prove that they are legally present in the U.S. Chances are that the 52 percent of Arizonans who support SB-1070 wouldn’t be if they thought they might become accidental targets of it. It’s also likely that, despite Kavanagh’s claim of equal treatment, most white-skinned Americans probably won’t have to worry about being interrogated about their citizenship status — even if they forget their license or other form of identification at home.

Though SB-1070 prohibits racial profiling, it doesn’t provide any details on the criteria that police should use to establish reasonable suspicion. Its architect Kris Kobach, however, has made a training video in the past outlining the factors that may lead to “reasonable suspicion.” Those factors include speaking “English poorly,” “indications from dress or appearance of the person that he is an illegal alien,” or the evidence that the “individual appears to be in transit or traveled a significant distance.” According to Kobach, reasonable suspicion must be based on the “totality of the circumstances,” which he translates to mean that officers must simply “rely on more than one” factor.

The Wonk Room also asked Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu on the criteria that he will instruct his officers to use when establishing “reasonable suspicion” that someone is undocumented. Though Babeu’s answer was vague, he did give his word that having accent, at least in Pinal County, will not be used against someone who is pulled over for a traffic violation.

Years after the end of World War II there were cases of Japanese troops scattered around the Pacific that were unaware or refused to believe that the great war had ended. Well it seems that in the United States there are an isolated group at the Heritage Foundation and in the Senate GOP that seem to have no idea that the Cold War ended 20 years ago.

It was revealed in this week’s hearing on the New START treaty that GOP Senators, as articulated by Senator Jim DeMint, are opposing START because they want to build a missile defense system that even George W. Bush opposed. DeMint at the hearing said that “obviously, we’re agreeing to keep our missile defense to the point where it does not render their weapons useless.” Peter Baker noted that:

If that is his concern with the treaty, then his argument is as much with former President George W. Bush as with Mr. Obama. After all, the missile defense program developed by Mr. Bush was not meant to render Russian weapons useless; it was to be a limited system to defend against nuclear missile attack by states like Iran. Although Mr. Obama reformulated the system last year, he kept Mr. Bush’s goal. The line of attack on the so-called New Start agreement with Russia is instructive, suggesting that some Senate Republicans may go after the pact on the grounds that it does not allow a missile defense against Russia, something neither Republican nor Democratic presidents have actually wanted… Mr. DeMint’s complaint about the treaty conflates the missile defense program begun by Mr. Bush and continued in different form by Mr. Obama with the original idea expressed during the cold war by President Ronald Reagan, who envisioned a much more robust program that actually was intended to neutralize the Russian nuclear arsenal.

See, the original idea as proposed by Reagan was when we were, you know, actually at war with the Soviet Union. Conservatives have myopically embraced this legacy of Reagan, while completely ignoring and dismissing his lasting arms-control legacy, as Reagan negotiated the first START treaty. After watching the Senate hearing, Fred Kaplan writes the “Cold War is over” but “you wouldn’t know it from some of the questions in today’s Senate hearing.” Kaplan adds, referring to the exchange between Jim DeMint and John Kerry:

Though they [Republican Senators] tried a few times this morning, the committee’s Republicans could find no substantive faults with this treaty… So the objections come down to missile defense—and one bit of today’s hearings raises the question of whether some of the most diehard Republicans understand this issue in the slightest… How many Republicans out there are like [Sen. Jim] DeMint, who seems to think the Cold War is still on? And how many Russian hawks watched that exchange and came away confirmed in their beliefs that the Americans are still after their hides?

In fact, it isn’t really that the Heritage Foundation doesn’t know that the Cold War is over. It is that they want a new Cold War. At a panel discussion in December, the central message was that the a new Cold War was on the way. In the Heritage Foundation’s missile defense propaganda film 33 minutes, the three evil leaders shown in the film as a reason for missile defense are Kim Jung Ill, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin. The Soviets – er Russia – over at Heritage and amongst much of the Senate GOP, remains very much the enemy.

It is important to understand the implications of the approach that Heritage, Senator DeMint, and the GOP caucus is advocating. Pursuit of a comprehensive missile defense system that targets the Russians will lead unequivocally to a massive nuclear arms race and nuclear instability. The Russians (and the Chinese) would simply build more and more missiles to overwhelm any defense, would develop expanded and more innovative ways to deliver these nuclear weapons, would put them all on instant hair trigger alert, and would have a very very itchy trigger finger. As a result, as Senator Kerry points out this would put us back where we were during the Cold War when we had 50,000 nuclear weapons. We would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons and a fantasy-based missile shield, that would only leave us and the world much less safe and much much poorer. This approach is so extreme that it is even to the far right of where the Bush administration was.

Yesterday, on CNN’s the Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer probed Mexican President Felipe Calderón about his country’s own immigration laws. Blitzer quoted a piece printed in the Washington Times entitled “Mexico’s illegals laws tougher than Arizona’s.” According to the article, “under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison.” The Washington Times then quotes Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) calling Calderón “arrogant and hypocritical.” However, it appears the Washington Times and the GOP sources it quotes relied on dated information.

Calderón informed Blitzer last night that Mexico has enacted its own immigration reform:

BLITZER: I read an article in “The Washington Times” the other day. I’m going to read a paragraph to you and you tell me if this is true or not true. [...] “Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to reenter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.” Is that true?

CALDERON: It was true, but it is not anymore. We derogate or we erased that part of the law…Not anymore, since one year ago. And that is the reason why we are trying to establish our own comprehensive public policy talking about, for instance, immigrants coming from Central America. [...]

BLITZER: Immigration is not a crime, you’re saying?

CALDERON: It’s not a crime.

Watch it:

In 2008, the Mexican Congress voted unanimously with 393 votes to decriminalize undocumented immigration to Mexico. Before then, the Washington Times description of Mexican immigration law would’ve been accurate. Following the 2008 reform, however, undocumented immigration is a minor offense punishable by fines equivalent to about $475 to $2,400. The approved reform identified Mexico’s old immigration laws as “inadmissible” and a violation of human rights.

Mexican lawmakers also recognized that they were not in a position to criticize the U.S. immigration system if they did not address their own stringent immigration laws. The Arizona Daily Star reported that “Some Mexican officials acknowledged that the current harsh penalties weakened Mexico’s position in arguing for better treatment of its own migrants in the United States.” Congresswoman Irma Pineiro of the small New Alliance Party states, “Mexico is politically and morally obligated to treat migrants with dignity and to make a commitment to human rights, as a country that both exports and receives migrants.” Rep. Edmundo Ramírez Martínez of the country’s Institutional Revolutionary Party told Mexican newspaper La Jornada that Mexico can’t demand the U.S. treat its Mexican immigrants with dignity without reforming their own immigration laws and decriminalizing Central American immigration.

However, just because Mexico reformed its laws doesn’t mean its law enforcement authorities got the memo. Amnesty International recently issued a report calling the “widespread abuse of migrants in Mexico” a “human rights crisis.” Nearly 10,000 migrants were abducted in Mexico over six months and an estimated six out of 10 migrant women and girls experience sexual violence — many not just at the hands of criminal gangs, but also the Federal Police.

Amnesty International recommends further reforms, including legislative reforms to ensure access to justice, the establishment of a federal task force to coordinate and implement measures, and the compilation and publication of data on abuses against migrants and the steps taken to bring those responsible to account –including public officials. However, one of the central issues, according to Amnesty, is that migrants still fear they will be deported if they complain to Mexican authorities about abuses. Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law still requires law enforcement to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country. The Interior Department is reportedly working to repeal Article 67 “so that no one can deny or restrict foreigners’ access to justice and human rights, whatever their migratory status.” In the mean time, the U.S. would be wise to look at Mexico’s immigration problems not necessarily as a source of hypocrisy, but rather, an extreme, but poignant case study of the deputization of immigration law and what can happen when it turns immigrants into criminals.