Who wants to go to Arizona? A brief survey of criminalization of immigration law in the U.S. context

Abstract

The state of Arizona, dissatisfied with circumstances arising from U.S. immigration policy, sought to promote adjustments in U.S. immigration law through the issue of local regulations: Arizona Senate Bill 1070, House Bill 2162. These statutes pursue to combat illegal immigration and harden the criminalization of immigration law by criminalizing the immigrants and conducts related to illegal immigration as labor issues. In this scenario, the purpose of this article is to promote a brief debate about the legal adequacy of Arizona’s acts, as well as the validity of the factual arguments that fostered the editing of such acts. The relationship between immigration and crime also may be questioned. Thus, this article promotes a brief analysis of the relationship between immigration and crime within the context of the paradigm shift of criminology-the passage of the etiological paradigm to the paradigm of critical criminology-and the effects of risk society and actuarial methodology on the way of thinking the issues pertaining to immigration and its relationship to crime. Finally, it questions the validity of Arizona’s acts based on empirical results about crime collected in recent surveys.