The Modern Independent

Arizona’s Draconian Immigration Law Reverberates in Colorado

Last week, the Arizona legislature passed a harsh immigration law (SB 1070) that has sparked a furious national debate.   The law was written by Russell Pearce, a state senator, who The New York Times observed:

“had long been considered a politically incorrect embarrassment by more moderate members of his party — often to the delight of his supporters. There was the time in 2007 when he appeared in a widely circulated photograph with a man who was a featured speaker at a neo-Nazi conference. (Mr. Pearce said later he did not know of the man’s affiliation with the group.)

In 2006, he came under fire for speaking admirably of a 1950s federal deportation program called Operation Wetback, and for sending an e-mail message to supporters that included an attachment — inadvertently, he said — from a white supremacist group.

Under Pearce’s stewardship, the bill makes it a state crime for immigrants not to carry authorization papers, requires the police ‘when practicable’ to check the immigration status of people they ‘reasonably suspect’ are in the country illegally. Failure to produce valid documentation could lead to up to six months in prison. To ensure enforcement, moreover, the law allows people to sue cities and counties if the law is not being enforced by the police.

Of course, the most obvious question commentators have asked is, as Salon’s James Doty notes, “’What do illegal immigrants look like?’” They're probably Hispanic,” he answered, “but so are 30 percent of Arizona's residents. So unless the law authorizes the stopping and questioning of any person who looks darker than the average Caucasian, there needs to be some other criteria that set apart illegal aliens from lawful residents.”

The problem, therefore, is that the law legally justifies racial profiling and does so at the expense of the constitutional rights of immigrants here legally and even Latino-Americans. For this reason, Doty writes that the law is unlikely to pass constitutional muster:

the Constitution's equal protection clause forbids the government from differentiating between anyone in the United States -- including illegal aliens -- on the basis of race. The new law, on its face, doesn't make racial distinctions, but its supporters haven't articulated any other grounds for suspecting that someone is an unlawful resident. It is, therefore, vulnerable to the argument that it essentially criminalizes walking while Hispanic.

Because of these implications, James Fallows at The Atlantic compared the new law to something passed under the auspices of the Chinese police state, while John B. Judis noted at The New Republic that the law has “a disturbing echo here of the worst periods in American and European history. And Linda Greenhouse wrote in the pages of The New York Times that the law’s requirement for immigrants to have legal documentation of their right to be in the country on them at all times is reminiscent of “one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa.”

Nowhere is the law getting more attention than in Colorado.  According to Karen Crummy at Denver Post’s The Spot, Republican gubernatorial candidate, Scott McInnis, “said today he backs Arizona’s tough immigration enforcement law:”

“I’d do something very similar” if elected governor, McInnis said on Peter Boyles radio show on KHOW, noting that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer who signed the bill into law was being treated unfairly. “Finally some governor stood up and said ‘We are stopping the retreat.’”

And former Colorado Congressman and veritable loon, Tom Tancredo applauded Arizona’s new law and he wants a similar law on the Colorado ballot.

Congressman Jared Polis, by contrast, who has made comprehensive immigration reform one of his top legislative priorities, told Politico yesterday that the new law “is absolutely reminiscent of second class status of Jews in Germany prior to World War II when they had to have their papers with them at all times and were subject to routine inspections at the suspicion of being Jewish.”  He also said, “I fear that Arizona is headed for a police state and it really underscores the need for immigration reform at the federal level to fix our system.”

Further, according to CBS news in Denver, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition is joining in the growing chorus of protests:

[On] Saturday the group left for Arizona to show solidarity. They fear the new law will lead to harassment and racial profiling.  "Immigrant communities and Chicano communities across the state of Arizona are in a state of terror," Julie Gonzales with Reform Immigration for America said. Along with planning a May 1 rally they are preparing for Arizona families to flee and seek refuge in Colorado.

"We know that at least one family has come to Colorado, brought their families, dropped everything and left because there is such a state of panic," Gonzales said.

One thing is certain, the Arizona law has put immigration back on the national agenda and it has introduced a new element in the local dynamics in Colorado that could ignite a powder keg in the state that is marked by racial tension and latent animosity.  Until lawmakers get serious about reforming the ways immigrants can come into this country legally—that is by allowing enough people in to satisfy the economic demand for them—it will remain impossible to secure our borders and draconian laws like Arizona’s will continue to prop up and we will get nowhere.

About Ryan Dawkins

graduated Summa Cum Laude with bachelor degrees in Political Science and History, and a masters degree in American History.