Proposition 200, the "Arizona Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act," was an Arizona state initiative passed in 2004 that basically requires: (a) persons to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote; (b) voters to present a photo identification before receiving a ballot at the polling place; and (c) state and local agencies to verify the identity and eligibility, based on immigration status, of applicants for non-federally mandated public benefits. The proposition also makes it a misdemeanor for public officials to fail to report violations of U.S. immigration law by applicants for those public benefits and permits private lawsuits by any resident to enforce its provisions related to public benefits. The requirement to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote was later ruled invalid in federal court.
Arizona is a state in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the Western and the Mountain states. It is the sixth largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona shares the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico; its other neighboring states are Nevada and California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest.
In political science, an initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote in parliament called an indirect initiative or via a direct initiative, the latter then being dubbed a Popular initiated Referendum.
A misdemeanor is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences. Many misdemeanors are punished with monetary fines.
Authors of the ballot measure, the "Protect Arizona Now" committee, claimed that the provision of state identification and public benefits to individuals without adequately verifying their immigration status gave rise to opportunities for voter fraud and imposed economic hardship on the state.
Opponents of the ballot measure asserted that it was anti-immigrant and reminiscent of California's 1994 Proposition 187, as well as disputed the existence of voter fraud and argued that immigrants were important contributors to the state's economy.
Nativism is the political policy of promoting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants, including by supporting immigration-restriction measures.
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento. The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 8.8 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, and the country's second most populous, after New York City. California also has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs.
Proponents
Two separate, rival groups supported Proposition 200. The first group was the proposition's sponsor, the Protect Arizona Now (PAN) committee, led by Kathy McKee and supported at the national level by the Carrying Capacity Network (CCN) and Population-Environment Balance (PEB). The second group was the Yes on 200 committee, led by Rusty Childress, a Phoenix-area car dealer, and supported at the national level by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).[citation needed] There was a split within PAN, which McKee described as an "attempted hijacking of a local effort by greedy, out-of-state interests"; this split highlighted an ongoing feud within the immigration reduction movement between FAIR and the other two groups dating back to at least 2003, with CCN and PEB issuing frequent statements accusing FAIR (as well as NumbersUSA) of being "reform lite" and "undermining real immigration reform."[citation needed]
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is a non-profit tax exempt organization in the United States that self-identifies as an organization seeking to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. The group publishes position papers, organizes events, and runs campaigns in order to influence US immigration policies. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies FAIR as a hate group with close ties to white supremacist groups.
NumbersUSA is an anti-immigration organization that seeks to reduce both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. It advocates for immigration reduction through user-generated fax, email, and direct mail campaigns.
PAN was formed by McKee and Childress, who became its chair and treasurer, respectively. The PAN National Advisory Board was chaired by Dr. Virginia Abernethy, and included Dr. David Pimentel and Marvin Gregory. Childress later joined a separate effort, Yes On 200, organized by FAIR.[citation needed]
Virginia Abernethy is a Cuban-born American academic. She is professor emerita of psychiatry and anthropology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She has published research on population demography and immigration. She ran for Vice President of the United States in 2012 alongside Merlin Miller for the American Freedom Party, a party that promotes white nationalism.
During the signature gathering campaign, McKee accused Childress of withholding funds and petitions from PAN and fired him. Childress sued McKee over custody of PAN's signatures and funds, but the court ruled in favor of McKee. Childress and the two most prominent supporters of the initiative within the Arizona state legislature, Russell Pearce and Randy Graf, then formed a separate organization, Yes On 200, which was funded almost entirely by out-of-state interests.[citation needed]
Russell K. Pearce is an American politician and Republican former member of the Arizona State Senate. He rose to national prominence as the primary sponsor of Arizona SB1070, a controversial anti-illegal immigrant measure that was signed into law in 2010. He was elected President of the Arizona Senate when the Senate began its current term in January 2011, but then suffered a dramatic reversal of fortune when he was ousted in a November 2011 recall election, the first legislator in Arizona history to be so removed from office. He served as Vice-Chair of the Arizona GOP, but in September 2014, he resigned the position after controversy over a comment about forced sterilization of poor women on Medicaid.
Randy J. Graf is a former member of the Arizona State House. He was the Republican nominee for Arizona's 8th congressional district in 2006.
When FAIR began an independent signature gathering campaign to collect the remaining signatures needed to put the initiative on the ballot, McKee accused FAIR of attempting a hostile takeover of PAN.[citation needed] When McKee named Abernethy, an avowed "ethnic separatist," as the chair of PAN's national advisory board, FAIR responded by issuing a press release calling for both McKee and Abernethy to resign from PAN and saying that Abernethy's views were "repugnant, divisive and do not represent the views of the vast majority of Arizonans who support Proposition 200." Abernethy's appointment drew harsh criticism from an anti-bigotry group based in Chicago, which noted her "leadership roles in other extremist organizations," such as The Occidental Quarterly and the Council of Conservative Citizens.[1]
The Occidental Quarterly is an American magazine published by the Charles Martel Society. Its stated purpose is to defend "the cultural, ethnic, and racial interests of Western European peoples" and examine "contemporary political, social, and demographic trends that impact the posterity of Western Civilization". The Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed it a "racist journal," while historian Tony Taylor describes the publication as "a far-right racially obsessed US Magazine". Other sources have referred to it as white nationalist. David Frum and Max Blumenthal have called it pseudo-scholarly or pseudo-academic.
The Council of Conservative Citizens is an American white supremacist organization. Founded in 1985, it supports white nationalism, and a variety of conservative and paleoconservative causes. Its statement of principles says that they "oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind".
Supporters partly relied for justification on a 2004 FAIR study that estimated that Arizona taxpayers were annually paying $1 billion to cover the education, uncompensated health care, and incarceration costs of illegal immigration, net of the taxes paid by the illegal immigrants.[5] This study appeared to contradict a 2003 study performed by a team at the Thunderbird School of Global Management and sponsored by Wells Fargo and the Consul General of Mexico in Phoenix, which estimated that immigrants were annually contributing $318 million more in income and sales taxes than they were costing the state in services and uncompensated health care.[6] However, it was not clear whether that estimate was based on all immigrants or only illegal immigrants.
In November 2004, the electorate passed Proposition 200, with 56% of voters voting in the affirmative.[7] Exit polls found that 47% of Latino voters voted in favor of the initiative.[8]
A substantial legal battle erupted over the precise definition of "public benefits." Arizona's Attorney General ruled that the law pertains to only discretionary state programs. Federally funded entitlements like food stamps and subsidized school lunches are examples of public benefits to which, given the Attorney General's finding, the new law would not apply. PAN interpreted the proposition to apply the welfare portion of the initiative to the nearly 60 programs contained in Arizona Revised Statutes Title 46, "Welfare."
Despite withstanding three pre-election and two post-election lawsuits, at least one lawsuit related to Proposition 200 is still pending. "Yes on 200" filed a post-election lawsuit, initially dismissed in the lower court but currently on appeal, saying that the Attorney General overstepped his bounds when he narrowed the definition of "public benefits."
On December 23, 2004, the federal appeals court in Tucson, Arizona removed an earlier restraining order that had kept the state from implementing the law. The entire law, with one exception, is in effect, using the definition of "public benefits" promulgated by the Governor and Attorney General. State, county, and city workers may be fined up to $700 for each instance in which they provide such benefits to persons who cannot produce evidence of citizenship.
Kathy McKee has since started a new group, Protect America NOW, to support similar initiatives in other states.
Voter registration and identification at the polls
Proposition 200 required, among other things, proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter identification at the polling place. No major elections took place after its adoption before November 7, 2006, and the actual implementation of these two provisions of the proposition remained unclear. Opponents challenged the constitutionality of these requirements upon voters, arguing that such a law could be used to discriminate against ethnic groups, thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment.
In October 2010, the Ninth Circuit held that the requirement to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote is invalid as preempted by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) and that the requirement to provide voter identification at the polling place is valid.[12] However, in April 2011, the court granted Arizona's petition for en banc review of this ruling, and it heard oral arguments on June 21, 2011.[13]
In April 2012, the en banc court also held that the requirement to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote is invalid as preempted by the NVRA and that the requirement to provide voter identification at the polling place is valid.[14] The Supreme Court of the United States declined to stay the ruling on June 28, 2012.[15]
In July 2012, Arizona submitted to the Supreme Court a petition for writ of certiorari to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling that the state's proof of citizenship requirement is preempted by the NVRA.[16] The Court granted the petition in October 2012,[17] and it heard oral arguments on March 18, 2013.[18] On June 17, 2013, the Supreme Court affirmed, in a 7-2 vote with Justice Antonin Scalia delivering the Court's opinion, the Ninth Circuit's ruling that Arizona's proof of citizenship requirement is preempted by the NVRA.[19]
Related Research Articles
California Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal immigrants from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the State of California. Voters passed the proposed law at a referendum on November 8, 1994. The law was challenged in a legal suit the day after its passage, and found unconstitutional by a federal district court on November 11th. In 1999, Governor Gray Davis halted state appeals of this ruling.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), also known as the Motor Voter Act, is a United States federal law signed into law by President Bill Clinton on May 20, 1993, and which came into effect on January 1, 1995. The law was enacted under the Elections Clause of the United States Constitution. The law advances voting rights in the United States by requiring state governments to offer voter registration opportunities to any eligible person who applies for or renews a driver license or applies for public assistance along with requiring the United States Postal Service to mail election materials of a state as if the state is a nonprofit. The law requires states to register applicants that use a federal voter registration form to apply and prohibits states from removing registered voters from the voter rolls unless certain criteria are met.
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Immigration reduction refers to a movement in the United States that advocates a reduction in the amount of immigration allowed into the country. Steps advocated for reducing the numbers of immigrants include advocating stronger action to prevent illegal entry and illegal immigration, and reductions in non-immigrant temporary work visas. Some advocate a tightening of the requirements for legal immigration requirements to reduce total numbers, or move the proportions of legal immigrants away from those on family reunification programs to skills-based criteria. What separates it from others who want immigration reform is that reductionists see immigration- or one of its forms- as being a significant source of social, economic, and environmental problems, and wish to cut current immigration levels.
Kris William Kobach is an American politician who served as the 31st Secretary of State of Kansas. A former Chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and member of the City Council of Overland Park, Kansas, he was the Republican nominee in Kansas's 3rd congressional district in the 2004 election, losing to Democratic incumbent Dennis Moore.
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