AZ’s Imigration Law

Disgraceful immigration law borne out of frustration

Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com

EUGENE ROBINSON

Arizona’s draconian new immigration law is an abomination — racist, arbitrary, oppressive, meanspirited, unjust. About the only hopeful thing that can be said is that the legislation, which Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Friday, goes so outrageously far that it may well be unconstitutional..

Brewer, who caved to xenophobic pressures that previous governors had the backbone to resist, should be ashamed of herself. The law requires police to question anyone they “reasonably suspect” of being an undocumented immigrant — a mandate for racial profiling on a massive scale. Legal immigrants will be required to carry papers proving they have a right to be in the United States. Those without documentation can be charged with the crime of trespassing and jailed for up to six months.….

Activists for Latino and immigrant rights — and supporters of sane governance — held weekend rallies denouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn’t the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom?

It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state — would send the Tea Partiers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?

And what is the deal with Sen. John McCain? The self-proclaimed practitioner of “straight talk” was once a passionate advocate of sensible, moderate immigration reform. Now, facing a primary challenge from the right, he says he supports the new law, which is as far from sensible and moderate as it could possibly be. Are six more years in the Senate really worth abandoning what seemed like bedrock principles? Or were those principles always situational?

Let me interrupt this tirade to point out that while Arizona has unquestionably done the wrong thing, it’s understandable that exasperated officials believed they had to do something. Immigration policy and border security are federal responsibilities, and Washington has failed miserably to address what Arizonans legitimately see as a genuine crisis.

Arizona has become the preferred point of entry for undocumented workers, and an estimated 460,000 are in the state — settling down, or just passing through — at any given time. I have driven down to the border and watched as authorities tried to pick out trucks and vans that might be transporting people without papers. I’ve spent a morning at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, which is usually crowded with recent immigrants; only the most naive observer would think that all of them, or even most of them, were in the country legally. The influx imposes an unfair burden on the state, and for years Arizonans have been imploring federal officials to do something about immigration reform and border control.

But the new law isn’t a solution. On the contrary, it will make the problems worse. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon — who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post calling proponents of the law “bitter, small-minded and full of hate” — hopes to file a lawsuit against the state arguing that local police are now being forced to fulfill a federal responsibility.

One of the concrete problems with the law treating undocumented immigrants as criminals is that it gives those without papers a powerful incentive to stay as far away from police as possible. This will only make it more difficult for local police to investigate crimes and track down fugitive offenders, because no potential witness who is undocumented will come forward.

And how are police supposed to decide whom they “reasonably suspect” of being in the country illegally? Since the majority of undocumented immigrants in Arizona are from Mexico, aggressive enforcement would seem to require demanding identification from anybody who looks Mexican. Or maybe just hassling those who look kind of Mexican and also kind of poor. Or maybe anyone who dares to visit the Mexican consulate.

Arizona is dealing with a real problem and is right to demand that Washington provide a solution. But the new immigration law isn’t a solution at all. It’s more like an act of vengeance. The law makes Latino citizens and legal residents vulnerable to arbitrary harassment — relegating them to second-class status — and it is an utter disgrace.

Old Schooners win w/catch-share

Popularity just part of halibut’s success

MIKE SIEGEL SEATTLE TIMES
An unusual parade of halibut schooners is led by the nearly century-old Vansee as the boats head out from Seattle while being filmed for a documentary. The halibut await off Alaska.

Old schooners still have a place, alongside modern methods, catch-share programs

By Hal Bernton | THE SEATTLE TIMES

SEATTLE — In 1911, the Tordenskjold, a 75-foot schooner hewed from old-growth fir, left the Ballard, Wash., docks for its first season of halibut fishing off Alaska. Early this month, as the Tordenskjold prepared for a 99th season, the boat joined up with six other fishing schooners for a rare fleet parade through Seattle’s Lake Union, the Ballard Locks and out into Puget Sound. The occasion was a video documentary commissioned by the Fishing Vessel Owners Association and a fishermen’s union that will chronicle the history of the fleet.

These schooners — despite their age — are some of the top-grossing boats in the North Pacific commercial halibut harvest. This year’s U.S. catch probably will be worth about $160 million; Washington fishermen, largely based in Puget Sound, are expected to bring in nearly 30 percent of the fish.
The value of the halibut catch is more than triple that of a few decades ago and reflects halibut’s transformation from a blue-collar staple to a pricey seafood that retails for more — often far more — than $10 a pound.

The harvests also have undergone a radical transformation from a pressure-packed derby to a system of individual catch shares that some see as a 21st-century blueprint for reforming other troubled U.S. fisheries. “From Florida to Alaska, catch-share programs help fishing communities provide good jobs while rebuilding and sustaining healthy fisheries,” said Jane Lubchenco, a U.S. Commerce Department undersecretary.

Tordenskjold captain Marvin Gjerde, 61, claims his shares with the help of a five-man crew. In a grinding season that stretches from April through early September, Gjerde and each of his crew often make more than $100,000. “Sometime around January, I always start going a little crazy waiting for the season to start, and come down and look at the boat,” said Pat Galligan, a stout 56-year-old fisherman from Aberdeen, Wash., who has fished aboard the vessel for more than two decades. “I come down and look at the boat, then come home, and then go look at boat again. I don’t know — it’s a sickness. But I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

They fish for halibut, as well as black cod, with longline boats that dangle thousands of baited hooks anchored along the sea bottom. Today, hydraulics provide the power to pull in the anchor or lift a 900-foot line off the bottom.    But the crews still use plenty of muscle as they bring in halibut that occasionally top 200 pounds. The crews gaff the fish, hoist them aboard, subdue them with clubs and gut the carcasses.

When Gjerde bought the Tordenskjold, the harvest was still open to anyone who bought a commercial-fishing license. He would fish hard and fast until the entire fleet reached an overall harvest total set by an international commission.    The harvest cap was set low enough to prevent the halibut resource from being depleted. But a healthy resource did not always yield a healthy fishery.

By the early 1990s, the Alaska halibut harvest was in disarray as thousands of vessels — large and small — rushed to grab a share of the catch. Openings that once stretched for weeks or months had dwindled to chaotic 24-hour dashes for the fish. And boats — often overloaded with fish — sank in rough seas. Between 1991 and 1994, 15 fishermen lost their lives in these brief openings.

In , 1995 the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal group with appointees drawn largely from the industry, imposed radical reforms. For the first time, vessel owners would receive quota shares for halibut and black cod that could be fished each year or sold for what the market would bear. Crew members were not awarded shares.

Critics decried the quota system as an inequitable privatizing of a public resource. They said it would shut newcomers out of the fishery, or take away dollars the government might have earned by leasing out rather than giving away fishing rights.    Others said the quota shares were a just reward for years spent fishing for halibut and would give the remaining vessel owners the opportunity to fish in a safer, more leisurely fashion and produce a higher-quality product.

A federal study showed that fishery safety improved greatly under the new system. Fish quality also improved as crews took more time to clean, dress and then quickly ice the catch. Prices rose as fish moved onto the market over a period of months rather than swamping buyers after a short season.
Gjerde and other schooner skippers were big winners.

Today, most schooner skippers hold shares of black cod and halibut worth $2 million to $6 million, according to industry officials.

But there is a limited market for these shares. Most shares can be sold only to other qualified fishermen. These rules were crafted to keep the shares out of the hands of investors with no connection to the fishery. Even heirs of fishermen can’t hold onto the shares unless they, too, venture out to sea. That means that Gjerde’s two children — a daughter who works as a paralegal and another daughter now raising children — couldn’t keep the shares without a big change in lifestyle.

Sooner or later, Gjerde expects to quit the Tordenskjold.    “I think about it quite a bit. But I don’t know just what I would do,” Gjerde said. “I’ve been doing this for so many years. The idea of retirement is kind of a tough one.”

MIKE SIEGEL SEATTLE TIMES
Marvin Gjerde, 61, co-owner of the Tordenskjold, struggles with the thought of retiring. “I think about it quite a bit. But I don’t know just what I would do.”