Welcome to Arizona … as long as You Aren’t Mexican

They refer to us as Mexicans, Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, and even “invaders.” The fact of the matter is that, if you’re brown, your English isn’t perfect, and you speak it with an accent, you are out of luck in Arizona. And on top of that, if you are undocumented or even forgetful, you will end up behind bars.

This sums up the new controversial immigration law approved by Arizona state governor, Jan Brewer, which she claims “protects all of us, every Arizona citizen and everyone here in our state lawfully.” The law makes it a serious crime to enter the state without the necessary visa and not only authorizes but obligates the police to detain and interrogate all of those who are not blond and do not sound like Shakespeare.

The legislation, which if not challenged by the Supreme Court, shall enter into force in August. It not only requires that police forces turn into immigration agents and arrest anyone who looks suspicious of having entered the U.S. illegally, but orders that those who do not have an official ID be arrested, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.

It is estimated that Arizona has approximately 460,000 illegal immigrant workers, the vast majority of whom are Mexican. The law prohibits hiring them or giving them any type of employment, and punishes those who transport them.

All of this through the work of the state’s Republican Sen. Russell Pearce, who drafted the law in question. It has raised anger and controversy not only from Latinos and human rights activists, but also from President Barack Obama himself, as well as Mexican and religious authorities. The latter include Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, who has called the measure counterproductive and compared it to “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques.”

But in reality, though this law may be over-the-top, it should come as no surprise that it is happening in Arizona, an ultraconservative, frontier state where the governor herself was caught on tape referring to Phoenix, the capital, as a “hell hole.”

And what about the other new law recently passed in Arizona that requires that all presidential candidates present their birth certificate to be put on the election ballots in Arizona? This is clearly open support of the right-wing movement that claims that President Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore not a legitimate president.

As if that weren’t enough, another new law authorizes all those who want to bear arms to do so, as long as they aren’t a convicted criminal, even without registration or verification of their criminal record.

But of everything that is happening in Arizona, the saddest and most pathetic case is that of Sen. John McCain, who, as he did not win the presidency, wants to re-elect himself for a fifth time, even at the expense of his principles and friends, proclaiming that any Latino could be illegal and demanding that Washington send troops to the border to prohibit the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The 73-year-old politician, who not long ago strongly and openly supported immigration reform, has now taken on the anti-immigrant theme as the banner of his re-election, shifting to the extreme right on many issues, but above all taking advantage of the prevailing animosity against immigrants in Arizona for the purpose of winning followers.

Indeed, his opponent, another Arizona native who wants his position, the conservative Republican J.D. Hayworth, recently raised controversy when he responded to the those who defend same-sex marriage with the idea that marriage should be based on the establishment of intimacy: “I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse.”

And don’t forget that Arizona was precisely the state out of which came the legendary Sen. Barry Goldwater, known as Mr. Conservative, who revived and gave rise to the neoconservative political movement in the ’60s, a movement which seems to be strengthening with the current sentiments of racism and xenophobia.

The anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment in Arizona isn’t new, but seemed to increase in recent weeks with the murder of a farmer known for his kindness toward migrants who passed through his property dehydrated and hungry. The cause of his death still unresolved, is being blamed on an “illegal.”

However, experts assure that the new law is nothing more than a product of frustration toward the federal government, which has done nothing to regularize the entry into the country of those in need who do not have papers. The only solution is United States immigration reform but, above all, an effort on the part of Mexico to make it so there is no need to emigrate.