Actual Immigrant Detention Center
Events in Arizona
The American people learned Tuesday that the state of Arizona has passed a bill, now sitting on Governor Janice Brewer’s desk. This bill, should it become law, would result in the racial profiling of all Hispanics and Amerindians in the state of Arizona because it only specifies that the local authorities check the documentation of any person that they “reasonably suspect” to be an “illegal” migrant. The result of course, will be that any person who is not obviously a white Arizonian will be accosted, demanded to present papers, and subject to jail and even possibly deportation for committing simple infractions like Driving While Hispanic and Working While Native American.
“I believe handcuffs are a wonderful tool when they’re on the right people,” said Russell Pearce, the Republican State Senator who wrote the bill. “We want to get them off law enforcement and get them on the bad guys,” he told Reuters.
According to State Senator Russell, any so-called “bad guy” would be any man or woman who is conducting their daily affairs. Russel Pearce is not just some right-wing politician. He has confirmed ties to Neo-Nazis and their organizations, according to Phoenix local media.
Furthermore, this bill makes it a crime to hire day laborers, or to transport “illegal aliens,” either actual undocumented migrants or simply Hispanics or Native Americans assumed to be “illegal aliens.” This will result in the harassment of not only Hispanics and Latinos on the basis of their accent or skin tone for simply looking for work, any work they can find to feed themselves and their families, but also any person hiring them without regard to their class. Even though the law does require some other legal reason to stop and question the persons—we all know how good the police are at making up reasons, no matter how ridiculous.
Immigrant Prisoners behind Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Infamous for his Mistreatment of Hispanic Prisoners. Once said being compared to a Klan member was “an honor.”
Myth About Immigration
Immigrants do not “take jobs,” as some would argue. Jobs are not set aside for Americans, and they do not belong to American workers, precisely because we live in a capitalist system. That means that the jobs actually belong to the owners of property and means of production. They are free to offer them to whomever they please. The irony never ends with the right-wingers and libertarians who decry government intervention in the private sector, yet wish to deprive business owners, even small business owners (or as we call them petty-bourgeoisie) the right to hire whomever they wish.
The Issue of Race
While there are some who argue that this law would not result in profiling on the basis of race and national origin, they are simply wrong. The bill is far too broad in language to require that there be an actual violation of the law already in progress before the demand for papers.
Yes, immigration is about race. The typical anti-immigrant activist always screams to the high heavens about how their anger is only about “law-breakers.” Crossing the border illegally is a federal misdemeanor. Breaking the speed limit is a crime that not only most Americans break at one time or another, but it is also responsible for the majority of car accidents, responsible for a great deal of deaths in America every year. If these people were so concerned about the law being followed to the letter, they would be protesting against breaking the speed limit, among other laws which are commonly broken.
The other problem with the “I’m just supporting the law” argument is that if that were the real problem, there is a simple, efficient way to fix the problem, one which is far easier to implement at a much lower cost than idiotic ideas such as border fences or mobilizing the National Guard. It’s called a guest-worker program, with more easily obtainable work/residency permits for workers who are citizens of Latin American countries.This would eliminate the need for such workers to break that “sacred” law which has unusual importance for some people. Of course do we see the defenders of the law screaming themselves hoarse for such a measure? Of course not. They don’t want to make legal immigration, which they usually claim to support, easier. They just want to keep the brown people out, plain and simple.
Yes, it is about race!
On the off chance that the reader is a “conservative” or anti-immigration activist and is offended by the insinuation that this is about race, I offer the following challenge. Organize some of your friends, or attempt to organize within existing anti-immigration organizations, a project to protest in favor of a guest-worker program and easier paths to legal immigration.
Call to Action
The American Party of Labor calls on Governor Janice Brewer to veto this bill and throw it on the rubbish bin where it belongs. We stand in solidarity with our Amerindian, Hispanic & Latino brothers and sisters against this hateful and bigoted legislation. The American Party of Labor calls on the Administration to enforce existing laws and pass Immigration Reform allowing easier access for guest workers to obtain legal residency and legal employment. Illegal immigration is more a problem for the immigrants themselves than the residents and citizens of this country—by being illegally here they are subject to even more gross forms of exploitation than the normal exploitations experienced by all working class Americans—immigrant and “natural born.”
Implications
Finally, if this law passes, it may have a silver lining, albeit one which will be far more bitter than sweet. For many years now, Arizona and many other border states have played host to large groups of people who seriously believe that illegal immigration is either the most or one of the most pressing issues of their time. A great deal of them believe that illegal immigration is somehow connected to high crime rates, or that illegal immigrants are a drag on the economy and perhaps that their own economic situation would be improved were it not for the presence of illegal immigrants. These are the people who would be most likely to believe that this new legal measure will lead to some kind of improvement, even more sorely desired due to the economic crisis which has hit Arizona especially hard.
What will the real results be? Police will be bogged down with nuisance calls, searches and arrests of innocent workers. Jails will become even more overcrowded. Illegal immigrants will fear police and not report crimes. The economy will not improve, and nor will the crime rate. If anything the economy will take and even bigger hit, starting with agriculture which is heavily reliant on migrant labor to process crops at low wages. The anti-immigrant mob will be forced to confront the fact that a measure they wholeheartedly supported, and in fact worked hard to get on paper in the first place, utterly failed to improve their lives. A few will be forced to ask themselves whether their problems were truly due to illegal immigration. We should all hope this law would not pass, but if suffering is what it takes to make these people see reality, then let them hang themselves with this repressive measure.
Give me a break!!! If someone is here legally, then they shouldn’t worry about it. I am so sick of people and groups who want to racially divide this country with petty arguements like this one.
I have no problem with anyone being in this country be it they are
black, brown, yellow, or white, as long as they went through the proper procedures. I happen to have a great deal of regard for the hispancics. They are very hard working people, in fact I have seen many who work harder than some whites that I know. This country needs to get a grip on the illegals in this country, if nothing else for the security of our homeland. What happened to common sense? I pray for this country because it surely need it.
@Kim
Actually I would say that it is the right and the Arizonan government which is attempting to divide people on “racial” lines.
Lets look at this realistically, who would be stopped by the police and checked for immigration status? The Hispanic? The Amerindian? The Black? Or a White person? And what “papers” would one present anyway to prove their citizenship? A driver’s license doesn’t cover it, Neither does a Birth Certificate (as there is no standard birth certificate) and very few citizens carry about US passports assuming they even have one.
Indeed I was born in this country and I have no papers whatever to prove my citizenship, and yet I am a citizen by virtue of the 14th Amendment which is very clear that birth alone is enough for one to be a citizen.
This law simply makes it legal for the police in Arizona to harass any person minding their own business while brown. As someone who has experienced racism at the hands of the police here in the South East…I am going to naturally oppose any measure which might increase incidences of racial prejudice anywhere. And Florida has plenty of “illegal” immigrants to have a similar problem and it tried rounding up these “illegals” and deporting them and you know what happened? Oranges rotted in the fields, tomatoes rotted in the fields, vegetables rotted in the fields. The sad state of affairs is that America either needs immigrants or it needs to start paying its workers more for agricultural work.
And of course the Arizona law does not address the problem of minor, citizen children of these “illegal” immigrants. Would they be deporting the child along with his/her parents?
Bear in mind that in Arizona there are large numbers of Amerindian Nations…Hopi, Navajo, etc–all of these people were born in the territory of the USA, and as such are all US citizens yet they are the ones who would be harassed. This also doesn’t take into account that the fact of matter is that there is a Huge Hispanic population in Arizona because there always has been. They’ve been living there for 500 years!
Indeed there is a whole segment of the population in the American South West that is Hispanic and of Mexican extraction and yet made no moves to come into the US. Rather it was the boarder which crossed them.
Now as far as people coming into the country I would think that the only ones who should have a real problem with immigrants would be “Native Americans” such as myself. Apart from those persons in their respective nations/tribes everyone else either is an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant. And I know well the process that the English and later American settlers used to come into our territories….Genocide.
As far as process goes…that does indeed need to be reformed. But this is the smallest and least important fix out of all the fixes that need to be made. Rather the creation of a guest worker program where people can come and go legally, and be hired legally so as to be able to join unions, and be paid a fair wage…or at least minimum wage
The more important fix is ending the dumping of subsidized American Grain onto the Latin American markets driving down the price of corn in those countries resulting in driving the farmers off their land. When they cannot find jobs in the cities they then head to the US to look for work. It is American Neo-Liberal “free trade” policies which exacerbated Illegal immigration in the first place.
And in between the more important and least important fixes is enforcement of existing employer laws and maybe even increasing the fines. If every person who was caught of employing an “illegal” immigrant were fined 5 Million Dollars per “illegal” per infraction, their hire rates would be nullified in short order.
I think the question can be turned around here. “illegal” and “legal” are terms meant to divide workers, crossing the border is a Federal misdemeanor, speeding is in fact a bigger crime. The fact is we are in the same boat as ‘illegals”, and their struggle is ours, but few people can see this. The bosses know that if American citizens united with the undocumented and brought them into labor unions they could increase their numbers and mutually benefit. American workers would not need to worry about having their wages driven down or being thrown off the job by cheap labor and the undocumented would not be exploited for below minimum wage.
Very good and very to-the-point analysis.
I liked the part where you call out the racism of these movements. These people yammer on nonstop about ‘its about nationality’ and ‘I don’t care about race’ but it’s all nonsense of course.
You know you’ve got these people cornered when they start with the Bill O’Reilly “I WANT THE LAW ENFORCED!” stuff.