Mexicans aren’t welcome in Arizona

Our neighbor Arizona is turning “fascist,” said Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in La Jornada. The anti-Mexican law the state just passed, which instructs police to arrest anyone they suspect of being undocumented, is “persecutory and racist.” Once it goes into effect three months from now, Mexicans will have to produce proof of legal residency at the whim of any authority who demands it. The law stipulates that you can’t be arrested solely because of your ethnicity—but everyone knows that’s what will happen. No officer is going to stop a white person and ask him to prove his citizenship. Only Mexicans, particularly the darker ones, will be harassed.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer justifies this vicious law by saying that only “criminals” need worry, said Juan Pedro Oriol in Mural. How very revealing. She and other Republicans are defining undocumented workers as criminals, as if they are thieves or murderers. A man who “leaves behind home and family to seek honest work in a completely alien, often hostile culture, is he a criminal for doing that?” Even formerly moderate Republicans have turned against us, said Carlos Fuentes in El Norte. Back in 2005, Arizona Sen. John McCain co-sponsored a “generous and intelligent” bill with Sen. Ted Kennedy that outlined a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Now, facing a tough Republican primary challenge, he has jettisoned his principles and lurched to the right. McCain actually came out in support of this law “legalizing a caste system.” It’s apparently fine with him that his fellow Arizonans who happen to be brown-skinned will have to carry identity documents with them at all times, “just as the Jews did in Nazi Germany.”

The underlying problem, said Andres Oppenheimer in El Universal, is that there is no legal mechanism for unskilled workers to enter the U.S. That’s why it’s so galling when Americans refer to undocumented Mexicans as “illegals.” Yes, the migrants have broken a law. But “so have U.S. citizens who run a red light, which causes much greater potential harm.” We wouldn’t brand such traffic violators as “illegals,” as if their entire existence were a crime. Visa violations are minor transgressions, and they will not abate until the U.S. passes comprehensive immigration reform. Hopefully, the passing of the draconian Arizona law will spur Congress to action.

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In the meantime, though, Mexicans in Arizona must live in fear, said Rogelio Rios in El Norte. “Hundreds of thousands of hardworking people will go off to work every morning not knowing whether they will end the day in jail, about to be deported and separated from their families.” Even the Mexicans who have papers will feel under suspicion all the time. It hurts to realize that so many Americans see us with such “hatred and contempt.”