"AN UTTER DISGRACE" - Arizona’s Act of Vengeance-By Eugene Robinson

[kpete]

Arizona’s Act of Vengeance
Posted on Apr 26, 2010

By Eugene Robinson

Arizona’s draconian new immigration law is an abomination—racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust. About the only hopeful thing that can be said is that the legislation, which Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Friday, goes so outrageously far that it may well be unconstitutional.

Brewer, who caved to xenophobic pressures that previous governors had the backbone to resist, should be ashamed of herself. The law requires police to question anyone they “reasonably suspect” of being an undocumented immigrant—a mandate for racial profiling on a massive scale. Legal immigrants will be required to carry papers proving they have a right to be in the United States. Those without documentation can be charged with the crime of trespassing and jailed for up to six months.

Activists for Latino and immigrant rights—and supporters of sane governance—held weekend rallies denouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the tea party crowd? Isn’t the whole premise of the tea party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim—and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state—would send the tea partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?

.......................

Arizona is dealing with a real problem and is right to demand that Washington provide a solution. But the new immigration law isn’t a solution at all. It’s more like an act of vengeance. The law makes Latino citizens and legal residents vulnerable to arbitrary harassment—relegating them to second-class status—and it is an utter disgrace.

more:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/arizonas_act_of_vengeance_20100426/

[smoogatz]

1. There's a simple solution: enforce existing labor laws, for starters.

And make the penalties a lot tougher on employers who knowingly and repeatedly hire undocumented workers. If you want to reduce illegal immigration, you have to turn off the big suckola of low-wage jobs that keeps drawing illegals across the border. Of course, actually wielding the punitive stick against the people who profit from illegal immigration is a tough political sell, especially if you're a Republican in a Republican state, and the exploiters are you and your Chamber of Commerce buddies. So instead you pass laws that make immigrants more frightened and more vulnerable, and that much easier to exploit.

[DevonRex]

2. He's right. Thanks for posting this. K&R. nt

[Blue_Tires]

3. I would propose whatever few minorities the Arizona LEO has

do their stop-and-checks in upper-class gated communities...Hassle them in the morning on the way to work, hassle them on Saturday when they are trying to catch a tee time -- Hell, setup full checkpoints and roadblocks just in those neighborhoods...If they did that, the law would be repealed in 3 weeks...

Remember, the so-called freedom-loving right-wingers were perfectly fine with the Patriot Act and racial profiling at the airport until THEY started getting pulled out of the security line for an extensive search, along with grandma...