Lemme See Your Papers! (updated)

Arizona’s new racist immigration law targeting Latinos has so many dark historical precedents it’s hard to see how it could be proposed in our time. The “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” has until Saturday to be signed or vetoed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and is widely viewed as the most anti-immigrant proposal in recent years. Now anyone who is or looks like an immigrant will have to carry papers declaring their status in our country at all times.

I wonder who they had in mind when they created a law targeting individuals who look like immigrants? The angry reactionary crowds who long to “take their country back” for “real Americans” long for a time when they didn’t have to share power or land or work or anything with people of color. The fervor we are seeing is a dying power trying desperately to maintain its relevance. If only they could understand that we have nothing to fear from one another and that our power only increases when we unite.

It certainly doesn’t seem as if this bill is designed to find undocumented immigrants of any other race besides Latin Americans. To say that one can look like an immigrant means that immigrants have a specific look, but in America we have immigrants from everywhere and nothing about their “look” gives any indication if someone came to our country legally or not. This amounts to targeting Latinos just as increased security measures at airports are targeted towards Arabs.

The Right is struggling to justify this divisive law with their standard distortions and lies. John McCain, the Republican’s 2008 presidential nominee and Arizona Senator, tried desperately to defend this outrageous measure on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor claiming that it was necessary to stop undocumented immigrants from “intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.” McCain is deliberately twisting the provisions of the bill to stir bigoted fears. The bill specifically criminalizes using one’s car to stop and “pick up passengers for work.” Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Comisión de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Commission) in Tucson summarized by saying:

[I]n New York City, you wave a cab, and when they pull over, of course, it blocks traffic for a few seconds. That’s exactly what would be criminalized in all of the state of Arizona–guaranteeing, of course, that day laborers could not be out looking for work. We’ve criminalized work in the state of Arizona.

So the bill now targets not just specifically Latinos, but the poor. Those who cannot find work and are forced sell their labor power on the streets are criminals. The point is not about blocking traffic or “causing accidents” for there are already regulations and laws about these behaviors. That Arizona had to craft the law in just this way shows exactly what they are trying to say. McCain has since walked back his statement, saying that it was an in-artful attempt at describing the problem of police chases with immigrants. Unfortunately this line of reasoning makes even less sense. Police chases aren’t going to decrease now that police can demand documentation at will, if anything that will increase police evasion! It doesn’t even matter to them that this bill only increases the problems we have with our immigration policies. Immigrants, legal or not, will be less likely to cooperate with authorities when increasingly treated as criminals. Those that are undocumented may well avoid police contact altogether, increasing the chances that crimes perpetrated against undocumented immigrants will be left unreported.

Businesses that encourage illegal immigration are ignored as previous legislation designed to crack down on businesses that knowingly employ undocumented workers if rarely, if ever, enforced. A simple, yet legislatively unspeakable, solution would be to enforce the national minimum wage laws so that the ability for businesses to exploit undocumented workers is reduced. The Right, who fret about people of color invading their precious white country night and day, of course refuse this because they need this issue in order to scare voters into returning them to power and a solution like this would require giving the poor and minorities of our country more money – a thought hostile to them. Status quo immigration policy provides them with an easy way to divide the working classes amongst themselves.

We need immigration reform in order to simplify our system, stop racist practices, reduce bureaucracy, and recognize to the potential wealth in all our sisters and brothers. Yet of course Obama will fail us on another of his promises. He’ll trot out his support of reform, much the same way he strings along the LGBT community with promises of equality. If you live in Arizona, please call your governor and tell her to please veto this racist bill.