Arizona: How Long Before They’re Wearing Stars?

The anti-immigration laws and the Tucson shooting have encysted Arizona in violence. But that’s not all: State representatives are springing back into action and are going to propose new discriminating measures which make the laws put aside by the Obama administration seem lax. The New York Times describes their content and is indignant. Where are the intentions proffered in the aftermath of Tucson? Is this the birth of a “papers please” society and of non-citizenship? The showdown will take place before the presidential election. In other words: now.

Topping the list of measures against illegal immigrants are bans on: driving a vehicle in the state, enrolling at a school and receiving social security benefits. And as if that were not enough, it is reported that these immigrants will receive special birth certificates for their children including text that will deny them citizenship in Arizona. Second-class… In other words, their only status will be that “they were born.” Not sufficient to become U.S. president! When we already know all that Obama has to prove…

Obviously some of the proposals (the denial of schooling or of citizenship) are so outrageous and such infringements of U.S. law that they are a real provocation of the federal state. There is also a requirement for owners to evacuate entire families if an illegal immigrant is found at their home. And a month’s imprisonment for a driver without a license with confiscation of the vehicle, which becomes the property of Arizona.

Already, the laws passed in 2010 allowing the police to stop anyone and require them to prove that they are not “illegal” have led to such procedures being deemed racial profiling of Latinos and the laws being declared unconstitutional. This resulted in local hysteria.

Although Arizona is being copied by some (Indiana passed the same provision on racial profiling), there are also citizens of the state who are protesting against these abominable laws. And some Phoenix residents have even hit on the idea of secession, to cut the state in two and to call their part Baja Arizona!

If all these laws against illegal immigration are continuing to flourish in Arizona, it is because any dialogue between Washington and Gov. Jan Brewer no longer seems possible. The unconstitutionality of certain laws of Senate Bill 1070 has exacerbated the radicalism of the Arizona authorities who see Washington — in other words, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security — stating that the number of illegal immigrants has dropped due to federal investments. Things are no longer on a rational level and haven’t been for a while. What new type of stigmatization are the Arizona lawmakers going to come up with next? We dare not even think about it. And where is the federal law regulating immigration to the U.S. promised by Obama in 2008? Who could imagine that America will forgo it?