The Hunt for American Decency in the Arizona Quicksand

[Derechos]

The federal judge who struck down most of Arizona’s new immigration law last week wasn’t trying to strike a blow for immigrants’ rights, about which her ruling said little. She wasn’t dictating what immigration laws should look like or how strict they should be. She was making a much more fundamental argument, one that has regularly emerged in America’s long and often ugly history in dealing with noncitizens and other vulnerable minorities.

The message was that Arizona cannot have its own immigration or foreign policy. It cannot tell the federal government how to enforce its laws. It is not up to any state to seize the power to upend federal priorities, particularly to wield a blunt enforcement tool that will do harm to Hispanics, citizens or not, who live in certain neighborhoods, wear certain clothes, drive certain vehicles and speak Spanish or accented English.

One excuse offered up for Arizona’s mindless new law was that it is just trying to do a job the federal government refused to do. But the law, SB1070, is far more pernicious than that. It begins with a grandiose statement of its purpose: “to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” “Attrition through enforcement” is a theory cooked up in right-wing think tanks — that mass deportation is unnecessary, because with enough hostile laws and harsh enforcement, illegal immigrants will all decide to go home.

That’s a product of delusion and cruelty. But it’s also an article of faith among the Arizonans who have yanked the white-hot center of the national immigration debate to Phoenix, like the law’s author, State Senator Russell Pearce; Gov. Jan Brewer, who has surfed the law to high poll ratings and a meeting with President Obama; and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who marches immigrant prisoners through the streets of Phoenix and vows to keep raiding Hispanic neighborhoods, law or no law.

District Judge Susan Bolton said it wasn’t up to these people to determine America’s immigration policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/opinion/04wed4.html

[lonestarnot]

1. Ever listen to the freak who dreamed up the bullshit and put it on paper? Better yet, ever looked

closely at his downturned lips?