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Arizona
Opens Doors Wide to Racial Profiling
BY
ERNEST COREA (IDN)
Anybody
who looks even slightly non-Caucasian should exercise extreme caution
about footwear while in Arizona, whether living there or visiting. Such
care is urged because a vocal and prominent supporter of the toxic
anti-immigrant measures that were recently signed into law there has
said that “illegal immigrants can be recognized from the shoes they
wear.” The man was serious.
So a police officer observing somebody walking about in shoes with a way
out design has to assume that he has caught sight of an illegal
immigrant on the run? Of course, the new laws, their extensive reach,
their background, and their potential consequences go well beyond
idiotic comments on shoes and immigrants.
A closer look at how the laws are supposed to operate has convinced so
many both inside Arizona and beyond that the motivations for this law
are primarily race and racism.
CONCERN
African Americans frequently complain that they are often pulled over by
traffic police for the offence of “driving while black.”
The practice became so widespread that in some jurisdictions traffic
patrols had to keep meticulous details of their actions as a means of
ensuring that racial profiling had no place in law enforcement.
In Arizona, when the new laws begin to take effect in the summer,
anybody who looks like a “suspected” illegal immigrant can be
stopped or pulled over by the police and asked to prove that he or she
is a legal resident.
As most “suspected” illegal residents in the state are considered to
be Hispanic, they will be stopped and questioned while walking, or
pulled over while driving, for a new offence: “being alive while being
Hispanic.”
A poignant response to the offensive new arrangements came from a
13-year-old who told a newspaper reporter: “We won’t be able to walk
happily on the streets any longer.” The youngster was born and raised
in Phoenix, the state’s capital. His concern is well taken, as the new
requirements demonstrate.
HIGHLIGHTS
The new law – described across the country as “the toughest” and
“most restrictive” immigration legislation – was adopted by the
state legislature, and Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican facing a
primary challenge from her right flank, signed it into law as a Senate
Bill (SB1070) on Friday April 23.
Here are some of its highlights. Under the new law:
-- Police officers are obliged to check at random the immigration status
of anybody they see (on the streets or anywhere else); if the police
have a “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is an illegal resident.
-- Legal immigrants – many of them citizens, some of them second and
third generation Americans – are compelled to carry at all times
documentation proving their legal status. Not having their “papers”
with them would be a crime.
-- Anybody who so wishes can sue local governments or agencies if the
would-be litigant believes that federal or state immigration laws are
not being enforced.
-- All people are prohibited from stopping a vehicle on a road to offer
employment to a prospective employee.
-- Nobody is permitted to get into a stopped vehicle on a street to be
hired if the process holds up traffic.
-- Illegal residence is a state crime.
DISCRIMINATION
Almost all these provisions, which give police officers discretionary
powers to decide whether a person looks suspiciously illegal while he or
she is, for example, attending church services, walking the streets,
riding a bus, driving a car, laying down mosaic tiles, or shopping in a
super market, potentially legalizes racial discrimination.
Hello Arizona, we have a problem. Racial discrimination is what the
civil rights movement was all about, and racial discrimination in any
shape or form subverts the country’s exemplary civil rights laws.
Gov. Brewer has said that racial profiling will not be tolerated in
Arizona. “We must enforce the law evenly and without regard to skin
colour, accent or social status,” she said.
A politician who supports SB1070 with missionary fervour as an
anti-illegal-immigration measure rejected the notion of racial bias and
complained that “when everything else fails, they (who?) raise the
race card.”
These sanctimonious explanations might have had some credibility if
sections of Arizona’s law enforcement machinery were not already under
Department of Justice investigation for alleged infractions of civil
rights laws.
Does Gov. Brewer seriously believe that citizens and legal permanent
residents of Arizona who are non-coloured will be asked to prove that
they are carrying their “papers” with them?
SMALL-MINDED
SB1070 is so blatantly what it is – born in prejudice and developed as
potentially an instrument of injustice – that it has evoked a slew of
adverse reactions.
The mayor of Phoenix wrote: “This place we’ve heard about lately,
the Arizona willing to risk economic boycotts and international ridicule
in the pursuit of an ugly, discriminatory law? I don’t recognise it.
“But I do recognise those responsible for this humiliating moment.
They are bitter, small-minded and full of hate, and they in no way speak
for Arizona.”
The newspaper 'Arizona Republic' editorialized: “The need to carry
proper ‘papers’ falls squarely on the Latino population –
including those born and raised in the Grand Canyon State. The bill
invites racial profiling and ignores the fact that Latinos are an
intrinsic part of Arizona’s history and its future.”
Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva speaking to civil rights activists
and others in Phoenix said: “We are going to overturn this unjust and
racist law, and then we are going to overturn the power structure that
created this unjust racial law.”
Pulitzer Prize winning Eugene Robinson, associate editor of the
'Washington Post' was consumed by outrage. In his view, “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 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.”
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian
Leadership Conference said: “If you are Hispanic in Arizona, you just
become a suspect and open to police harassment.”
The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good called SB1070 a
“wholly unbiblical and immoral” law.
The New York Times quoted an un-named Catholic archbishop as describing
“the authorities’ ability to demand documents” as Nazism. Will a
requirement that social security numbers be tattooed around the wrists
of “suspected” immigrants (not “illegals”) be the next mandatory
demand?
INFLUX
Offensive as the new legislation is, it is a fact, too, that the
uncontrolled influx of illegal immigrants has become a problem and a
burden to Arizona. Although over 500,000 persons attempting to cross
into Arizona illegally last year were apprehended, another 460,000 at
least, are either settled there or use the state as a transit point. The
pressures on space, services, and inter-personal relationships have all
become exceptionally difficult.
Moreover, the character of the influx has changed in recent years. From
being a flow of people seeking access to the economic opportunities and
social benefits not available in their countries of origin, it has taken
a somewhat sinister turn. Drug traffickers have led the vanguard,
followed or accompanied by the goons and gangs that provide ancillary
services to the drug traders.
The legal residents of Arizona, whatever their ethnic origin, have found
this situation vexing.
As Robinson points out: “Immigration policy and border security are
federal responsibilities, and Washington has failed miserably to address
what Arizonans legitimately see as a crisis.”
This is not a problem that began with the inauguration of President
Barack Obama. Several administrations, and their counterparts in the
legislative bodies, have ducked the issue. Now, even Senator John McCain
of Arizona, who was expected to lead rational and responsible engagement
in this issue, plays stealth politics.
Senator Lindsay Graham (a Republican from North Carolina) who played
Sancho Panza to McCain’s Don Quixote during the presidential election
campaign, has threatened to desert bipartisan energy legislation on
which he has been working with Senator John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman
(both Democrats), if the Democrats want to give immigration reform
priority.
Once again, politics trumps policy. No wonder injustice prevails.
OBNOXIOUS
Where does all this leave the people of Arizona who are the intended
victims of SB1070? On the way to harassment, humiliation, and worse,
unless Washington intervenes: to confront the challenge posed by an
obnoxious, incipiently racist law in Arizona, and also to grapple with
the wider problems of mass, undocumented immigration.
Obama brought up both issues during his remarks at a naturalization
ceremony for active-duty service members on the eve of SB1070 being
signed into law in Phoenix.
He acknowledged the need for federal authorities to deal with the
broader problem, and conceded that “failure to act responsibly at the
federal level will only open the door to irresponsibility by others. And
that includes, for example, the recent efforts in Arizona, which
threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as
Americans, as well as the trust between police and their communities
that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”
“In fact,” he said, “I’ve instructed members of my
administration to closely monitor the situation and examine the civil
rights and other implications of this legislation. But if we continue to
fail to act at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided
efforts opening up around the country.”
This is an edifying theoretical construct but does not go very far –
if it goes anywhere at all – in confronting the issues at both levels
with the sense of urgency they demand.
[Source:
IDN-InDepthNews
| Analysis That Matters]
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The
writer has
served as Sri Lanka's ambassador to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the USA.
He was Chairman of the Commonwealth's Select Committee on the media and
development.
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