State and Local
Re-Living Our Immigrant Past: From Hazleton to Arizona and Back Again
The intent of Arizona’s SB 1070, the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” is to chase illegal immigrants out of the state. Or, as the new law puts it more formally: “to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” The stern new law quickly made Arizona the target of international news headlines, boycotts, demonstrations, and lawsuits—most recently by the ACLU and a coalition of civil rights groups. While the spotlight has been on Arizona, however, copycat legislation has been brewing in at least 16 other states, supported to one extent or another by two organizations that have made a cause of providing legal and political assistance to lawmakers similarly intent on “attrition through enforcement.” The two groups, which work together, are the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), an affiliate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the lesser-known State Legislators for Legal Immigration. IRLI lawyer Kris W. Kobach, who was a chief adviser on immigration issues to Attorney General John Ashcroft following the attacks of 9/11, has consulted with lawmakers around the country, helping frame and defend state and local legislation targeting illegal immigrants. (At the Justice Department, Kobach engineered a controversial program that aimed to register visitors from certain Muslim countries). Read More
Class Action Challenging Arizona Law Reveals Depth of Constitutional Rights at Stake
Yesterday, a diverse group of individuals and organizations filed a class action challenging Arizona’s harsh immigration enforcement law SB 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 28, 2010. This law, among other things requires state and local law enforcement to check the immigration status of individuals it encounters, and makes it a state crime to be without proper immigration documentation. The lawsuit offers a compelling look at the egregiousness of the law, the variety of constitutional rights at stake, and the diverse group of individuals and organizations who will be adversely affected if the law goes into effect. Read More
Anti-Immigrant Group Recommends Economic Self-Destruction for Arizona
Washington D.C. – In data released “exclusively to FoxNews.com,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) – architects of the new Arizona law SB1070 – claim that unauthorized immigrants in Arizona are costing the state’s taxpayers $2.7 billion per year for education, medical care, and incarceration. The… Read More
Does Sarah Palin Support Arizona’s Law? You Betcha She Does!
In her latest right-wing cheerleading routine, former Alaska Governor/Tea Party Squad Captain, Sarah Palin, shook her political pompoms for Arizona Governor Jan Brewer at a press conferences defending Arizona’s controversial immigration law (SB 1070). Palin, who appeared shoulder to shoulder with Gov. Brewer on Saturday, used the opportunity to take a few pot shots at President Obama, repeat the words “illegal immigration” and “borders,” and wag her finger around. The event was dedicated to the launch of Brewer’s new website, “Secure the Border,” which features “East Coast media” gotcha tactics, Sarah Palin’s face, drug and kidnapping statistics and a bevy of ridiculous headlines designed to equate the words “immigrants” and “criminal.” For all its mavericky-ness, however, Gov. Brewer and her new website still fail to explain how Arizona’s law will help solve our immigration problems, target drug-smugglers or end violent crime along the border. Read More
Immigration, Oil Spills and America’s Slippery Slope
It’s hard not to draw parallels between the two biggest stories in today’s headlines—a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a punitive new immigration law in Arizona. While on some basic level most Americans care about the environment and immigration, it’s not until something really goes wrong that most people begin to pay attention and ask questions. Do we really have to see the smoke to realize something’s on fire? Read More
Not All States Target Immigrants or the Slightly Suntanned
Despite the commotion around Arizona’s SB 1070, a recent report shows that more laws expanding immigrants’ rights are being enacted than those contracting them. The Wilson Center’s study, Context Matters: Latino Immigrant Civic Engagement in Nine U.S. Cities, found that in 2007, 19 percent of 313 bills expanding immigrant rights were enacted and only 11 percent of 263 bills contracting rights were enacted by state legislatures. Washington, for example, passed SB 6403, which seeks to improve high school graduation rates by serving vulnerable youth, including recent immigrants. Andrew Selee of the Woodrow Wilson Center concluded that “most cities and counties are trying to figure out how they can best incorporate these immigrants,” many of whom are a “productive part of society,” rather than target them for deportation. Read More
‘Fox & Friends’ Trumpets Farcical Claim About Murders by Unauthorized Immigrants
The infotainment show Fox & Friends recently trumpeted the absurd and baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants kill 2,158 people in the United States each year. However, as Media Matters describes in detail, this random number is based on a 2005 article in the right-wing journal Human Events that uses a methodology no serious researcher could possibly endorse. The author of that article derived his “estimate” by assuming that unauthorized immigrants in the United States commit murders at exactly the same rates as the murder rates in their respective home countries. So unauthorized Mexicans are assumed to mimic the Mexican murder rate once they get here, unauthorized Salvadorans are assumed to mimic the Salvadoran murder rate, etc. As if this weren’t ludicrous enough, the author throws in an inflammatory and irrelevant comparison with the U.S. death toll in Iraq. In fact, empirical research over the past century has demonstrated repeatedly that immigrants to the United States, including the unauthorized, are far less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born. And no amount of grandstanding by Fox and Friends will change that simple fact. Read More
“Suiting Up” Against the Constitutionality of Arizona’s Enforcement Law
Before Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ever put pen to paper to sign SB 1070, immigration rights advocates were preparing challenges to the law. Various members of the administration have hinted that the Arizona law may face a federal challenge—Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the Department of Justice is reviewing the law for a possible suit, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano echoed this in a hearing last week, stating that she had “deep concerns” with the law. Even President Obama has admitted that the law threatens to “undermine the basic notions of fairness.” Read More
A Race to the Bottom: The Best of the Worst in Recent Anti-Immigrant Proposals
Just when you think you’ve heard it all—someone, somewhere, sets the bar even lower. It’s not an overstatement to say that the immigration debate is ripe with contention. It inspires commentary from a wide range of political spectra—from the libertarian no-border folks to the “don’t retreat, reload” tea partiers. But regardless of political leaning, nearly all groups agree that immigration is a problem that needs to be fixed, albeit with an even wider range of solutions. However, right and left aside, there are people who want to take the immigration debate in yet another direction—downward. Against the backdrop of Arizona’s harsh enforcement law, there have been a slew of anti-immigrant aftershocks posing as solutions to our immigration problems—aftershocks that are as ludicrous as they are alarming. And for the record, this is the part of ILLEGAL that people don’t understand. Read More
Forward March: Hundreds of Thousands Took to the Streets Demanding Immigration Reform
Sparked by Arizona’s anti-immigration enforcement law, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Saturday to demand congressional action on immigration reform. Carrying signs that read “Do I Look Illegal?” and “We are All Arizona,” labor, student, civil rights and immigration activists gathered in more than 70 cities nationwide (including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Milwaukee and San Francisco) with one united message—we need immigration reform now. Read More
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