A friend of mine likes to say, “When the pie gets smaller, the first thing to leave are the table manners.”
Enter Arizona’s SB 1070.
To no one’s great surprise, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton essentially gutted SB1070 by declaring the most radical parts of the Arizona law as unconstitutional. Bolton had plenty of good reason to knock down the law, specifically the fourth, 10th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution.
Not that the constitution ever mattered to those who support SB1070. This has never been about the law, or immigration for that matter. This has always been about elections — specifically the race for Arizona governor and what party will control the legislature (and for those who like to point out that a majority of people here and nation-wide support the bill, I say this: a majority of Germans thought Hitler was a great guy, too).
I few weeks back the Arizona Capitol Times ran an article outlining how SB1070 finally passed. Yes, finally passed. As the Capitol Times article noted, this same law was introduced three time prior to 2010, and in each of its previous incantations the bill never made it to a committee vote in the Arizona legislature. The Capitol Times article documents the politics that lead to SB1070 not only getting out of committee, but actually passing. Lobbyists for groups that had vehemently oppose it in the past — including the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Arizona Professional Police Officers Association and many more — stepped out of the way this time under threat from Russell Pierce, the state senator who introduced the divisive bill. Pierce threatened to accuse them of pandering to undocumented immigrants . . . and, well, they just couldn’t have that, could they?
It was, to put it mildly, a statewide capitulation to cowardice.
An article in Geopolitical Weekly did a decent job of showing why, in the end, the bill will reach well beyond the Arizona-Mexico border, now matter how courts rule in the end. It’s a very well done piece. Key passages come under the title “A Temporary Resolution,” in which the author explains the historical relationship between Arizona and Mexico. It boils down to this: Arizona seeks cheap labor, and Mexico provides it. It was supposed to be a short-term solution to some of the animus that arose following the Mexican-American war. Unfortunately the resolution stopped being temporary long ago. That Mexico provides Arizona with cheap labor is as true today as is was when this area was first settled as part of the United States. The irony in all of this is that the very people who wrote and passed SB 1070 were the same group of people who less than a decade ago asked the Border Patrol to ease up on enforcement so that their friends in the business community could have access to cheap labor. Cheap labor, more than anything else, is why our current border conditions exist as they do.
While the author is right about some people — mainly conservatives — being concerned about a cultural shift, those people are late to the party. Mexican culture plays a huge role in Southwest culture, from Texas to California. Like every other culture that’s moved here, it has been Americanized. But the reason people immigrate from Mexico is no different from the reason our relatives did: for a shot at a better life, not to recreate the turmoil and economic depravation from which they came.
One of the key issues not addressed in the article, and rarely addressed at anytime, is that the Mexican economy is wholly controlled by a literal handful of very wealthy families, and they aren’t letting go. In order to maintain control of the country — not to mention the better part of its wealth — they have sold out the rest of their fellow Mexicans, and have prevented innumerable policies and programs from becoming law in Mexico (including important public education, health and environmental initiatives). These laws would have strengthened Mexico's economy, provided literally thousands of jobs and kept people from immigrating to the U.S. Unfortunately, those in control of the Mexican economy are not so much worried about the health of Mexico as they are the health of their bank accounts.
Let there be no doubt that there is an immigration problem, and that it is an international problem that will require the work of both nations to solve. But before that can happen, major changes have to take place on both sides of the border. In Mexico, the government must begin to answer to its people instead of a handful of families, and on our side the issue must be wrestled away from the xenophobes who would rather scare people so that they can get elected than come up with actual solutions.
One more side note — the irony not lost on many of us is that the republicans have picked up this issue and are running with it for a third consecutive election cycle. In Arizona the issue comes up every couple of years. Here it is a smokescreen to distract attention from the disastrous republican policies that have ruined Arizona’s economy and social institutions, from health care for indigent children to education. Nationally, republicans controlled congress for a decade, and the legislative and executive branches for six years and did nothing about immigration. Every time my republican friends complain about this issue (or choice issues with women) I remind them that when republicans had the chance to do something, they passed.
