On June 25, in Phoenix, I was honored to participate in a panel sponsored by the Arizona Latino Media Association. The other panelists included Nancy-Jo Merritt, a longtime Phoenix immigration attorney; Antonio Bustamante, an activist and attorney who grew up on the border, and John Kavanagh, the legislator who sponsored the House version of SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law. The panel was moderated by New Times journalist Monica Alonzo.
Honestly, you could talk about SB 1070 for ten hours and still have things to talk about.
It’s a law that requires all police officers in Arizona to enforce immigration law, and if they don’t, their employers, taxpayer-funded cities, towns, counties and the state itself, are open to citizen lawsuits.
The law requires all Arizona cops who stop, detain, or arrest people they “reasonably suspect” of being in the country illegally to ask for papers and, if no papers exist, to check immigration status. The catch is, the cops can stop, detain or arrest for anything from murder to the violation of an obscure town ordinance.
Lawyers say the “harboring” and “transporting” aspect of the law can criminalize US citizens who, in the act of living with, lunching with, driving with, praying with or (doing just about anything else with) a person they know to be undocumented, happen to violate a traffic law or a city ordinance. That could include taking your undocumented mother to the grocery store, or driving your nana to the cardiologist’s office. Tony Bustamonte noted, forcefully, that a good many American citizens of Latino descent have friends or relatives who don’t have papers.
And then, of course, critics of the law worry that it will encourage racial profiling of brown-skinned U.S. citizens, and there are cases winding through the courts to prove that.
Many light-skinned Anglos don’t see what the big fuss is — hey, the cops are just enforcing a law that mirrors federal immigration law.
But legal experts say part of the federal immigration law that is “mirrored” is an obscure World War II era code that requires aliens to carry registration cards.
Japanese American citizens interred in the camps remember this code well.
During the panel discussion, a lively audience and the panelists tackled SB 1070 from a number of different angles — the morality of it, historical context, how it may be carried out, efforts to stop it, its legality, and, in the view of many, its racism.
At one point, Nancy-Jo Merritt noted that many of her undocumented clients are Canadians.
A spirited discussion ensued.
Rep. Kavanagh announced that “illegals” who were Canadians could “stay” in Arizona because they have money and buy real estate.
Then he said, several times, that he was just kidding.
What’s the matter, can’t anyone take a joke these days?
FOR RITA AND OTHER COMMENTORS:
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“What’s the matter, can’t anyone take a joke these days?”
I choose not to treat it as a joke because, it isn’t a joke, was never said as a joke, and although he might have been laughing when he called it a joke, he knew better than anyone that he meant exactly what he said. Psychologists call it a freudian slip, and sometimes those things can be blessings in disguise.
Now we get some insight into what’s behind the rhetoric, and it has the same face it has always had. I’ve seen this before as a child during our country’s segregation era. It demoralizes one more than those who don’t have to deal with it know. There are few things that can wound a person that are worse than knowing that many in his/her own country don’t think that he/she deserves to be treated like everyone else in that country, and that some of these people hate him/her and call themselves Christians at the same time. They don’t seem to be reading the same Bible as the one I read. That, or they’re blatant hypocrites. I cast my vote for the latter choice.
Thank you Representative Kavanagh, Thank you on many levels. Thank you for being honest. Thank you for validating my beliefs about this law, Thank you for failing to recognize what your Irish ancestors went through so history can repeat itself.
I wish that all Americans could do some research on American History and learn that this problem was started by the USA. On August 4, 1942, the U.S. and the Mexican government instituted the Bracero program. Thousands of impoverished Mexicans abandoned their rural communities and headed north to work as braceros.
The occurrence of this grave situation coincided with the emergence of a demand in manual labor in the U.S. brought about by World War II. Despite their enormous contribution to the American economy, the braceros suffered harassment and oppression from extremist groups and racist authorities. I am a proud American but I feel that in our history we have taken advantage and used many cultures including; American Indians, African Americans, Chines Americans and so forth. It is time that we start recognizing that all of these cultures helped make this a great country! I do beleive that our borders need to be secure, but not this way. In my opinion, everybody that is already here needs to have amnesty.
[...] money to buy foreclosed properties. One of the panelists, Terry Greene Sterling, blogged about it here. Channel 5 reporter Sarah Buduson also reported the [...]
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