The Criminalization of Immigration

Last week, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed the SB-1070 bill which will enact a series of measures based on an incorrect view of migration and that are a crime against the human rights of those without documentation.

After having passed the regulations, the governor of Arizona said, “We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels.” Demonstrations are expected. Nevertheless, this confrontation is without doubt going to exacerbate the already polarized groups even more.

According to the bill, authorities from Arizona will be able to treat any migrant as a criminal for the simple reason of having a skin color, accent, or appearance different than an American.

With such measures, fear among all immigrants has increased because, even if one is in the country legally, one has to carry his or her identification documents at all times in case any authority has “reasonable suspicions” he or she is in the country illegally.

Now local and state authorities will be authorized to make arrests without a warrant that provide for the deportation of the person that committed the public offense.

It also prohibits the local authorities from imposing federal immigration laws. This will force local authorities to treat all violations of federal immigration laws as if they were crimes. To make things worse, after the initiative comes into force it will criminalize offering employment to the immigrants in public spaces without documentation.

Actions of this sort are condemnable because they border on a xenophobic attitude — criminalizing migration as if it were a felony and forgetting to take into account the contributions that immigrants have made to the development of that country.

Further aggravating the tense atmosphere, the violence of drug trafficking that crosses the northern border gives pretext to the U.S. border states to increase security, and incidentally, to be stricter with illegal immigrants, giving way to prejudice and racial stereotypes.

What the United States really requires is immigration reform that regulates the flow of people and permits them to work freely according to the necessities of the U.S. labor market and without fear of the persecution and intimidation.

The Democrats who control the Senate and the House of Representatives have postponed the migratory reform that, they said, would be a priority to remove the legal limbo of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that live there.

The only encouraging sign is that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, called the criminalization of the illegal immigrants “misguided” and he said that his government is considering the implications of that extent of civil rights.

The Department of Justice also ordered an investigation whether the state legislation violates the federal civil rights laws.

Actions like these founded in the Arizona law should be censured, but also call for our [own] governments to work towards creating welfare conditions for [our] society so that nobody has to leave his or her country and risk his or her life.