You can read a really good analysis of  just why, exactly, Obama chose this time and place to speak about immigration in a big way. Just link here. Obama delivered his talk at American University, in Washington. He  said this, in a nutshell: It’s time to reform federal immigration policy using a four-pronged approach of border enforcement, workplace enforcement, visa policy modernization and a stand-in-line-and-pay-your-fees pathway to a green card. (Citizenship, and voting privileges, would come years later.) (Oh, and the comprehensive immigration reform Obama touted is not new;   Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, with President Bush’s blessing, tried to get it passed  back in 2006. )

Obama also took a couple of jabs at Arizona and SB 1070, saying the law pummels law enforcement authorities with burdendome expenses and responsibilities, and, of course, opens the door to racial profiling.

Almost immediately after Obama stepped down from the podium,  John Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills legislator who has become a key spokesman for SB 1070 after sponsoring a similar law in the Arizona House, appeared on TV in Phoenix. He told  FOX News he was offended that Obama lumped immigrants who came here illegally with immigrants who came legally, like his grandparents. He said the Obama plan meant “amnesty” and SB 1070 protected against racial profiling.

Kavanagh had recently done a little offending of his own, when  he “joked” to a roomful of Latino journalists that Canadian “illegals” could stay in Arizona because they had money. You can read about that here.

Sen. Russell Pearce, the main sponsor of SB 1070, told Phoenix FOX news that Obama was fear mongering and just wanted “amnesty.” Pearce has been accused of fearmongering, too. The Arizona Republic noted that Pearce erred when he attributed 9,000 deaths to “illegal immigration.” In a fascinating and informative profile, reporter Gary Nelson notes:

Pearce has frequently cited a soaring crime rate caused by illegal immigration as one of the reasons for his stance.

However, statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that violent and property crimes in Phoenix have decreased in the last three years at a rate that is even faster than the nation’s as a whole.

As recently as two months ago, Pearce wrote a constituent that illegal immigrants are responsible for “over 9,000 American deaths every year.” The number has been attributed to U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who said he “extrapolated” from a Government Accountability Office study. The study, however, was on illegal-immigrant prison populations and does not mention that figure.

Read more: azcentral.com

Just days before Pearce accused the President of fear mongering, Gov. Jan Brewer talked about “beheadings” that couldn’t be substantiated, and said all those “illegals” crossing the border were drug mules.

Here’s Brewer’s beheadings video: Brewer talks about beheadings.

The beheadings couldn’t be substantiated, according to Politico.

SB 1070 has long been promoted by proponents as kicking in only after a  cop  lawfully stops detains or arrests someone they suspect of committing a  ”crime”  ( the ” crime” category includes   city ordinances and  traffic violations) and then only after “reasonable suspicion” exists that the  person is in the country illegally.

Today, thanks to  Evan Wyloge, a rising star  journalist who has been covering this angle relentlessly we learn:

Lyle Mann, director of the Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training board, said what constitutes a “stop, detainment or arrest” is really much broader than the law’s supporter’s have been conveying since the law was signed April 23.

“The truth of the matter is an officer can stop anyone for any reason and ask them anything,” Mann said. “Is that kind? Is that brutish? That’s another question.”

Does this broad interpretation also apply to US citizens who are lawfully stopped detained or arrested while driving their undocumented relatives?

We’ll know for sure on July 29, when the law kicks in, barring court injunctions.

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?

On these pages, I’ve been honored to introduce you to the work of some of the top journalists in Arizona. Brady McCombs, a reporter for The Arizona Daily Star, is one such journalist. He’s been writing about immigration in Arizona for years, and he has a nose for lies and  half truths.

McCombs recently questioned Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who claims that crimes committed by undocumented immigrants are “off the charts.Babeu  appeared in the recent \”dang fence\” ad for John McCain, who’s fighting a tough mano-a-mano in the Republican senate primary against J.D. Hayworth.

Babeu is an ally of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the boss of the Pinal County deputy who allegedly got grazed with the bullets of  an Ak-47-type weapon by faceless Mexican drug traffickers with Sinaloan accents. Paul Rubin, another fine reporter, has called this shooting into question, as I noted in this post and this post.  As you can see, Pinal County borders Maricopa County, which is the most populous county because it encompasses the Phoenix metro area.

Was the Pinal County shooting a hoax?

And are Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu’s numbers backing up the violence committed by “illegals” exaggerated?

Once again, you be the judge, after reading Brady McComb’s fine reportage.

At the very least you’ve got to wonder: What was John McCain thinking?

UPDATE: MCCOMBS POSTED AN UPDATE ON MAY 27.

The revised stats from the Pinal County Sheriff’s office appear to have changed.

A week after Arizona’s governor signed the toughest immigration law in the nation, SB 1070, a Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy claimed he was shot with an AK-47 type weapon in an ambush with five drug traffickers. Bullets whizzed, he said. The ambushers disappeared, even after a massive search by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies and other law-enforcement groups, like the Border Patrol. The suspects: drug traffickers from Sinaloa, Mexico.

The deputy, Louie Puroll,  was released from the hospital a few hours after he was admitted. He’d been grazed by either one or two bullets.  He’s not talking to the press.

Now at least one journalist, and a very good one at that, is calling the shooting into question.

And here’s  the latest update, from a rival newspaper, in response to the story questioning the shooting.

You be the judge.

Friends so much has happened  today, just one week since Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s controversial  immigration law, a lot probably escapes the  national news. For instance, the Nazis are back in Phoenix. I‘ve written about them before.

Today, local neo-Nazis showed up  to support  Bill Montgomery, whom Sheriff Joe Arapio endorsed for the upcoming Republican primary for Maricopa County Attorney. Montgomery was embarrassed, according to this account of the event. I took the photo below when Nazis demonstrated against thousands of human-rights marchers in the spring of 2009.

In the meantime, activists say they’re serious about boycotting Arizona, and officials from our neighboring Mexican state of Sonora declined to attend a scheduled meeting for the  Arizona-Mexico Commission.  A few days ago, I asked Margie Emmerman, who heads the pro-trade, pro-business commission, how she felt about the new immigration law, which Gov. Jan Brewer signed less than a week ago.

Emmerman declined  comment.

This is a copy of the letter about the Sonoran refusal to attend the meeting.

End of letter.

I just read that at a Pinal County sheriff deputy (Pinal County is right next door to us, some folks live there and commute to Phoenix) says he was shot with an AK-47 by suspected pot traffickers. (The United States is the largest consumer of Mexican Pot in the world. This stuff likely came from Sinaloa.)

Vice President Biden is coming to town this weekend, just as Sheriff Joe continues his fifteenth raid of the Phoenix area in search of undocumented immigrants.

And Governor Jan Brewer, who was secretary of state of Arizona and replaced  Janet Napolitano when she was named secretary of the department of Homeland Security, signed a revision of  Arizona’s immigration law. Some say it makes it more difficult for cops to racially profile, others say it makes it easier to have cause to arrest undocumented immigrants for minor city and county ordinance violations.

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail “alert” from a man named Eric Johnson, writing, as he put it, “for that Great American, Senator Russell Pearce.” Johnson wanted me to know that an immigration bill was zipping through the Arizona House of Representatives. The bill was, word-for-word, the same bill Russell Pearce had authored and successfully moved through the Arizona Senate a few weeks earlier.

I first ran into

Senator Russell Pearce last year, when he vowed at a press conference that he’d get his immigrant-trespassing bill passed in 2010. He called it the “safe neighborhoods” bill. It penalizes undocumented immigrants for setting foot in Arizona and turns cops into immigration enforcers.

True to his word, Pearce got a Senate Bill passed this year, and a similar House bill today sailed through the Arizona Legislature committee of the whole, and is set to be voted on tomorrow or later this week. It is called HB 2632. I sat in the balcony of the Arizona house today, surrounded by lobbyists who talked so loud it was hard to hear what the legislators said on the floor below us. I did notice Mexicans sitting with inscrutable expressions on their faces and a gaggle of yellow-shirted, Pearce fans dressed in yellow tee shirts.

I’d seen those shirts, and those faces, before.

Look at the pictures below, which I took during Pearce’s 2009 press conference.
Note three things.

First, note that Russell Pearce wears a yellow tee shirt

Second, note that his ally Sheriff Joe Arpaio stands nearby, and then takes the podium.

Third, note that the aging woman in yellow stands near a sign that says “illegal aliens” cost the state $400 million for uncompensated healthcare. I point out the sign because undocumented immigrants are banned from using state-funded healthcare.

The same lack of logic must have prompted Pearce to call his trespassing bill the “Safe Neighborhoods” bill — because critics say it would make neighborhoods less safe. It should, in fact, be called the Unsafe Neighborhoods bill.

Here’s why.

The proposed law, which should be voted on any day this week, will transform Arizona policemen into immigration enforcers, whether they like it or not, and these immigration cops will, like Sheriff Joe Arapio, neglect the solving of serious crimes, like rapes and murders, in order to arrest each and every undocumented immigrant in Arizona for “trespassing.”

Keep in mind that approximately 460,000 undocumented immigrants are thought to live in Arizona.

If the new immigration cops arrested even one-tenth of these men, women and children for trespassing on Arizona soil, the state would surely face expensive challenges in court because the immigration goons would almost certainly question, detain, and arrest people with brown skin who are American citizens. This of course, is already happening in Phoenix.
Beyond civil rights abuses, there’s the practical matter of, the expense of arresting 460,000 people in the face of severe budgetary problems.

Arizona faces the “second steepest budget decline” in the United States, according to The Arizona Republic.
Arizona’s leaders have already knocked more than 30,000 people (mostly little kids) off state-funded healthcare, sold state buildings and closed state parks and schools.

Yet those same budget slashers are set to vote this year on a largely unfunded law that would financially burden a state already crippled by the recession.

The promoters of the law say each immigrant will be forced to pay $500 and that will cover expenses.

But ask yourself whether the trespassers about to be deported are eagerly going to hand over $500.

Or if they even have such cash in the first place.

It’s not a practical solution.

Pearce is not a practical man, however, and he is not supported by practical men.

He is not supported by clear-headed conservatives or moderate Republicans. He is not supported by Democrats. He is not supported by the business community or the agricultural community or any other reasonable community.

He is supported instead, by national anti-migrant groups, a dwindling number of Arizonans who fear or hate Mexicans, the aging groupies dressed in yellow, and, finally, by Minutemen.

Or, at least a few Minutemen.

Pearce’s own son said at a hearing I attended last year that he is a Minuteman, and Pearce’s good friend and colleague in the senate, Al Melvin, judging from the last line on his resume, is also a Minuteman.

Minutemen aren’t just tea party gadflies on steroids. And they aren’t just retired military folks who’ve overstated illegal immigration threats so they can dress up in camouflage once again and drive around in quads and report to their command center about “illegals” invading America.

You may recall that a Minuteman splinter group was accused of slaughtering a nine-year-old child in Arivaca, Arizona. The trio says they are innocent, and await trial in Pima County Superior Court. According to police, they slaughtered he little girl and her dad in an effort to steal the dad’s marijuana stash so they could fund their operation to protect America from “illegals.”

Consider the logic of that plan.

Then consider the logic of Arizona legislators who just pleaded poverty and stripped tens of thousands of children off healthcare rolls and closed state parks and slashed school budgets and then turn around and vow to vote on a burdensome, expensive law that will mandate the arrest of 464,000 people for trespassing on Arizona soil.

What happened to all that concern about budget woes?

What happened to the logic?

I don’t have the answers to those questions.

You could get them from that Great American, Senator Russell Pearce, though, if you call him at the State Senate. Or, if you want, you could call Kirk Adams, who is the speaker of the Arizona House, the guy who just allowed the trespassing bill to pass through a committee so it could be voted on by the entire house, instead of keeping the bill in the committee and letting it die.

Or, maybe you could just call up a Minuteman.

But if he and his advisors gambled that rounding up hotel maids and landscapers would gain him more voter approval, they gambled wrong.

In part due to his “hard-nosed and sometimes perceived heavy handed tactics against illegal aliens” as well as an ongoing federal grand jury inquiry over alleged abuses of power, Sheriff Joe’s  support is tanking in the Phoenix metro area, according to a recent poll of Maricopa County voters.

The details: Well-respected local pollster Earl de Berge, who has taken the pulse of Phoenix for many years,  found that only 39 percent of registered voters now  approve of Sheriff Joe. That’s down from an astonishing 64 percent approval rating in 2007.  According to the poll, Sheriff Joe’s still got most of the county’s GOP voters in his camp, but he’s lost the support of those free-thinking Independents. And in a state where one-third of the voters are Republicans, one-third of the voters are Democrats (they never cottoned to Joe) and one-third of the voters are Independents, Joe might well lose his next election.

Which might explain why Sheriff Joe sent out a  fund-raising letter to voters who live outside of Maricopa County. A friend of mine who lives in heavily conservative Yavapai County forwarded me  a copy of Sheriff Joe’s fundraising letter. It references a January 16 human rights march in Phoenix that I happened to cover for my book, which comes out in August and is called ILLEGAL: Life and Death in the Undocumented Underground.

Before I get into the letter, here’s a picture of the march  by  photographer Kathy McCraine. (I’m the female journalist in jeans covering the march.) Do you see nasty signs? Do you see masked marchers? Do you see hooligans?

Photo by Kathy McCraine

See, the reason I ask all these questions is because Sheriff Joe, in a fundraising letter that he sent to  those conservative prospective donors in Yavapai County, writes this about the march documented in the picture above:

“On January 16, 2010, more than 10,000 protestors marched on my jails to oppose my enforcement of state and federal immigration laws.

Protestors brawled with and assaulted police. Demonstrators dressed in all black and wearing hoods to conceal their identity threw bottles filled with rocks and attacked officers including a mounted officer and her horse. The mob then surrounded her and hit the horse with sticks.

The masked protestors screamed profanities and called for my assassination carrying signs that read “Assassinate Arpaio” and other violent messages some so profane, I won’t bother repeating them here.”

Sheriff Joe says in the letter to send money fast, so he can continue to enforce the law even in the face of mounting attacks from the Leftist media, the Leftist presidency, the Leftist U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now, from this most recent demonstration he infers  a mob of 10,000 masked izquierdistas  threw bottles and beat horses with sticks.

Here’s the truth: Of 10,000 marchers, 9,997 were peaceful.

That’s according to public documents.

Only three marchers were singled out by county prosecutors for causing trouble at the January 16 march. That’s right. Three people. The first, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Matthew Henry, allegedly used a wooden stick to whack a mounted Phoenix police officer  who was “working crowd control.” Twenty-seven-year-old Issa Emadi is accused of throwing one water bottle at the cops.  And twenty-four-year-old Sarah Grace Daniels is accused of striking a cop with the handle of a banner she had been carrying in the march.

I’m not saying Henry, Emadi and  Daniels were in the right if they did what they are accused of doing. They face serious criminal charges for their actions, and if they’re guilty, they’ll pay.

But isn’t it also a sin to scare donors into sending you money by  painting  an entire group of peaceful marchers (mostly Latino families) as radicals?

I have covered several of these marches against the Sheriff’s alleged violations of human rights, and I can tell you I have never seen any violence. I didn’t see violence on January 16.

However, a mom, dad and their two children  saw part of the melee that allegedly involved Henry, Daniels and Emadi. The parents told me they saw a female mounted cop ride into the crowd and squirt  people with pepper spray. Of course, the cop was probably trying to subdue the three protestors.

Unfortunately, the Phoenix mountie also sprayed this immigrant couple’s  five-year-old son.

The child was treated at a hospital emergency room for breathing difficulties.

I took this picture of him a week later. I slanted  my iPhone camera in order to take advantage of the natural light. 

You can see the child is  physically okay now, and he doesn’t like to talk about the pepper spray. Scroll back up and take a look at his eyes. You’ve  got to wonder what goes on inside his five-year-old heart whenever he sees a uniformed cop or a horse.

Ask yourself: Who is the true victim?

The boy?

Or the sheriff?

It’s a happy plate.

The young woman was not happy. She and her husband, who had a fatal disease, were about to make a life-and-death gamble.

They were going to deport themselves to Mexico to maybe save his life.

Emphasis on the word “maybe.”

They didn’t have room in their baggage for the plate, one of their most prized possessions.

They wanted me to have it.

“I’ll keep it for you until you return,” I chirped.

Of course, we both knew we might not ever see each other again.

I can’t tell you more about the woman right now, because she and her husband take up an entire chapter in  my nonfiction book, ILLEGAL, which will be published later this year by Lyons Press, which is a division of Globe Pequot Press.  I can’t tell you a lot about the real-life characters in the book until the book comes out.  What I can tell you is that most of my book characters are undocumented immigrants.  I’ve recorded some of their stories on video and in photos and I’ll post all that when the book debuts.

Until then, I’ll blog about the  news events that impact the lives of undocumented immigrants.

Or I’ll blog about leavings, treasures, artifacts, recuerdos of the year I’ve spent getting to know the people in the shadows.

Like  the happy dolphin plate.  It couldn’t have cost more than a few bucks.

To the immigrant family that owned it, though, it was a treasure.

As the temporary steward of this recuerdo, I  put it on my office shelf.

Every now and then I pick it up and stare at it. Cavorting dolphins notwithstanding, it reminds me of the sorrows and struggles of undocumented immigrants toughing it out in Ground Zero for the Immigration Debate–Phoenix–in 2010.

And she’ll listen, and do all she can for them, because she loves them that much.

During the time of the rosarios, the Virgen is taken from home to home. She stays for one  night at each home, and the people in the shadows say a rosary to her. The next day, she’s taken to another home. Another rosary is said in her honor in the new home. And so it goes.  In Phoenix, a lot of  the homes the Virgen visits belong to people on the edge. The recession, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the harshest laws in the nation against undocumented people have all taken their toll. But the  Virgen loves the people in the shadows, and they love her, and sometimes honestly that’s all they need. Here is a picture of the Virgen at one of the homes in Phoenix. She stands on an altar  outside a house trailer. The people inside don’t have money to buy food. But they give thanks to their  Virgencita anyway.

La Virgencita in Phoenix -- Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The feast day of the  Virgin of Guadalupe is December 12, and that is the last day of the rosario. As the feast day approaches, many of the people in the shadows take joy in the matachine dancers. You can read historical context of the matachines here. These dancers dance in gratitude to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And the dancers aren’t professionals, but the people in the shadows themselves.

Sometimes, they dance in the day. And sometimes, they dance in the night.

Matachine Dancers in Phoenix Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

On December 6, the matachine dancers assembled at the Immaculate Heart Catholic Church in Phoenix. (This was a church built many years ago because Mexicans weren’t all that welcome in white Catholic churches. Hey, it’s Phoenix. What did you expect?) The matachine dancers danced all the way to the headquarters of the  Diocese of Phoenix, where they were blessed by the bishop. I think this was about mile or so of dancing. I videotaped it on my iPhone, and made a movie out of it, which you will see below. It reminded me how privileged I am to write a book and tell the untold stories of the people in the shadows. For me, it is such an honor to write a book for a non-Spanish speaking audience, a book that  conveys how undocumented immigrants live, love, sin, hope and pray. And one of the lessons I’ve come away with is this: You don’t need a lot of stuff  to celebrate and give thanks.  You just need to sing and dance.

So now, from the hidden worlds of the undocumented immigrant to you–an iPhone video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZab6PeGL9c

Merry Christmas from Terry Greene Sterling. Merry Christmas! Sing! Dance! Be grateful!