It is clear that Arizona’s extreme stance on immigration enforcement has caused a stir across the country- one that can be felt within the political arena, the media, and immigrant rights and human rights groups, in addition to catapulting the immigration debate into the limelight. Arizona’s SB1070, which makes it a crime to be undocumented in Arizona and mandates that local police stop and question people who seem “reasonably suspicious” of being undocumented, is scheduled to be enforced by July 29th unless the numerous legal challenges to the law, including the most recent Department of Justice lawsuit against it, succeed in stopping it in its tracks.
While polls show that a number of people support the state’s intervention in immigration enforcement, as we get closer to d-day for the implementation of SB1070, the boycotts against Arizona continue to pile up. Irrespective of the different ways in which the law is being debated, what is for certain is that the state of Arizona is doing a stellar job of isolating itself in a number of ways, both nationally and internationally.
While Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon has already denounced Arizona’s decision to implement SB1070 on a number of occasions, a recent sign of the adverse impact such a law will have on foreign relations between the U.S. and Mexico and other Latin American countries comes in the form of the U.S.-Mexico Border Governors Conference that takes place every year. This annual conference provides an important arena for the governors of 6 Mexican states and 4 U.S. states to come together and discuss issues that are common to all of them, as well as function as a space to represent the unity of the two nations of border issues. For the first time in the 28 years that this conference has been running, it looks like SB1070 might have put a spoke in its wheel. This year’s conference was scheduled to take place in September and through a rotational system, was to be hosted in Arizona by Gov. Jan Brewer, who has championed the new anti-immigrant state measure. Following the announcement of Gov. Brewer as the chairwoman for the 2010 conference, all six Mexican governors wrote to her expressing their umbrage with the law and their plans to boycott this year’s conference to demonstrate their protest against SB1070. The governors wrote that they would not set foot in the state of Arizona because they considered the law, which Gov. Brewer continues to support, to be “based on ethnic and cultural prejudice contrary to fundamental rights.”
Gov. Brewer expressed her disappointment at the boycott saying-
The people of Arizona and the people of America support what Arizona has done…For them to basically not attend here because of that, I think is unfair.
Based on the governors’ boycott of the conference, Gov. Brewer canceled it this Wednesday. The governor’s of the other border states, some of whom do not support the new law, have questioned Gov. Brewer’s authority to cancel the conference and are looking to move it to a different state. And it looks like this might not be the only thing to be leaving Arizona because of it’s harsh new law.
Some time ago we had written about the ways in which baseball players were taking a stand against SB1070. Given that 27% of baseball players are Latino, there has been growing talk about the 2011 All-Star game, which is currently scheduled to be held in Phoenix, Arizona, being moved to another state as long as the unconstitutional and potentially racist law was in effect. As we come up to the 2010 All-Star game, which is taking place in California next week, civil rights and immigrant rights organizations are putting pressure on Bud Selig, the Major League Baseball Commissioner, to move the 2011 game to a state where the players and the fans do not have to worry that they will be singled out by the police for the color of their skin. A few weeks ago, New York Rep. Jose Serrano sent a letter to Bud Selig urging him to move the All-Star game from Arizona and to take an official stand against the law that many players feel is an affront to civil liberties and to the spirit of baseball, but got no response. Opponents of SB1070 and civil rights groups that are mobilizing support to ‘move the game’ held a protest outside the headquarters of MLB earlier today.
As more and more examples come in of the ways in which this draconian law is adversely impacting all aspects of society and culture, states like Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina are working on following Arizona’s lead and introducing similar bills in their states. As more states think of taking immigration enforcement into their own hands, it is important to keep in mind that when we deny due process to some and compromise their civil liberties, we compromise the human rights of all.
Photo courtesy of nytimes.com
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