Arizona Bound
What better way to spend Memorial Day Weekend than joining the protests against the asinine Papers Please immigration law? So, I’m heading to Phoenix and in between doing some more reporting on John McCain’s Last Stand, I plan to join the Saturday march against the onerous SB1070. Hope some of you can join me. Some are predicting a turnout of 50,000 or more, boosted by both the AFL-CIO and SEIU.
I don’t think they will be marching, but it was heartening to see a powerful group of urban police chiefs call upon the Justice Department to block this anti-American law. I was proud to see our LAPD Chief Charlie Beck there. And let it be noted that the police chiefs of both Phoenix and Tucson were also present. We have seen some ugly things come down this past year. And we see some equally inspirational moments.
See you in Phoenix.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:04 am
They predicted something like 50k at the March for America in D.C. earlier this year and 200k showed. Don’t be surprised to see a similar turn out there. Caravans of buena gente are quickly organizing as far away as out here in D.C. to drive to you.
May 27th, 2010 at 7:53 am
For those like Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano who never read the Arizona law before commenting how they think it is racist and possible un-constitutional, below are excerpts and link to the Arizona law.
When Americans are asked:
“Do you favor or oppose requiring people to show documents proving their
immigration status if government officials have reasonable cause to ask for
them?”
84% of a nationwide poll of registered voters answered in FAVOR of the above statement.
Democrats 75% in Favor
Republicans 95% in Favor
Independents 82% in Favor
May 27th, 2010 at 10:50 am
I hope the protest rocks! Godspeed as they used to say…
May 27th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Pokey, how about turning your little mind to real facts like how many POLICE CHIEFS are against this law.
Reality checks are fun.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I wonder if Cooper will toss any slow burning plastic bags into trash dumpsters…
May 27th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Anna, how about turning your little mind to real facts like how many police officers are for this law.
Reality checks are fun.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I’ve spent little time in Arizona, but here in South Texas the cops, most of whom are Mexican-American, can spot a mojado at about 200 paces.
May 27th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
The measure, which passed on a 28-10 vote as an amendment to the budget, would bar the state from doing business with any company found to break federal laws barring illegal immigrant hiring. It would also toughen penalties for creating or using fake identification documents, and explicitly deny in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants.
The amendment would also require the state’s public health insurance program to verify residency through the Department of Homeland Security, and would require the state to give legal residents priority for subsidized housing.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/mass_senate_pas.html
Racists.
May 27th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
It seems as if (ahem) someone here has a penchant for appropriating my handle. I don’t harbour doubt as to who the culprit may be… but let’s just say he and our host seem inseperable.
This time I echo the expressed sentiment but must shy away from predictions as to how many companereos will put their bodies where their sentiments lie. Let’s hope “I” am right… who knows I just may see “me”… and maybe, you too!
May 27th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
Read the Bill.
LA has got a bigger problems than worrying over Arizona’s. It is bankrupted from failure to deal with their own.
Do LA residents really have time to be marching in the streets of Pheonix, minding others business when their own is in such a god awful mess?
May 27th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Using your logic for whatever it’s worth the country should pack up it’s 600-odd far flung military bases and call home the 600 ship navy.
Whatdayasay?
No. I gonna march and show these mummies how I feel. LA can do without me this weekend.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Patricio Guzman, grab your 16mm and your film crew! The Battle of Arizona has begun.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
In fact the whole state of CA’s financial mess reminds one of Mexico’s perennial.
It is time to give it back to Mexico and close the border with the ‘United’ states there.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
For what it is worth… why not just abrogate Gadsden and Guadalupe Hildalgo?
May 28th, 2010 at 7:42 am
IIRC the Arizona law reflects the un-enforced Federal law. How about protesting in D.C. instead?
Bob Williams, I too live in south Texas (Deeeeeep South Texas in fact) and you are absolutely correct. The vast majority of law enforcement officers are Hispanic and can spot a mojado damn near as soon as they see them. However, I’ve not heard that term (mojado) for a while but maybe that’s just where I live. Perhaps illegal immigrant is the better, less pejorative term.
May 28th, 2010 at 8:32 am
GM Roper: my Mexican-American students always used the word mojado, both as a noun and as an adjective meaning “trashy” or “vulgar” . I’m not going to give much away, but this was withing a 50-mile radius from Falfurrias.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:11 am
[...] Arizona Marc Cooper will be there [...]
May 28th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I am no expert on this Arizona statute. But just looking at what Pokey posted, the concern is the language stating that a law enforcement official may not base his decision “solely” on race. That means s/he can base a decision to interrogate “mostly” or “almost entirely” on race. But the real problem is that Americans are going to be required to “show papers” demonstrating that they have as much right to be here as their next door neighbor. By this statute, the state is certain to be engaging in action that will humiliate innumerable actual citizens of the US. Some people would say that risk is worth taking. Virtually all people who say that are those who have no fear that anyone will be asking them for their “papers.”
May 28th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Bob W: as someone who is 100% bilingual let me advise you that the word mojado is highly offensive and inflammatory. Not that I care but if u say it to right person you are likely to get your rosy little handed to you.
Btw I Can also spot illegals very easily. It’s enough to see a Gardner, a nanny, a busboy, a fieldworker, most construction workers and just about everyone else doing sweat labor for your convenience and you ve probably got an illegal.
How the heck did your starving ancestors get here. What ” line” did they stand in to get their pathetic arses into the u.s.? 99 percent of those who claim their grampus came here legally came where when any starving potato eater or anyone else was allowed in with no limits so plse save the bs.
My god we are back to calling people mojados. Typical of wops, micks, spicks, krauts and limeys. Which one are you Bob?
May 28th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
At least the racial faultlines in this country are now back in the open.
May 28th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Marc C? My god we are back to calling people mojados. Typical of wops, micks, spicks, krauts and limeys. Which one are you Bob?
I’m a combination of Kraut, Limey, Mick, Frog and maybe even some Polack. But if a Hispanic uses the term Mojado, and that has ALWAYS whom I’ve heard the word from is that “racist?”
May 28th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Bob Williams, I won’t give anything away either, and I’ve heard some of my university students use the term as well. But like I said, I’ve not heard the term used in a number of years and I’ve not taught at THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS – PAN AMERICAN for about 5 years…
May 29th, 2010 at 12:11 am
GM… Mexicans who use the term Mojado are using a racist term just as African-Americans do when they use the word nigger.
You think the word “wetback” is anything but degrading and offensive? I dont give an EFF WHO uses it. It is what it is: racist and dehumanizing.
May 29th, 2010 at 4:27 am
How the heck did your starving ancestors get here. What ” line” did they stand in to get their pathetic arses into the u.s.?
My mother applied for a visa in 1953.
She secured a sponsor, an aunt she had never met, who posted bond on her behalf. She traveled across her country thee times to be interviewed in depth at the American Embassy. They were especially interested in her membership in a union. The process to gain the visa lasted about 18 months. She arrived in New York in 1954.
She was naturalized in 1967, after I was born.
Now she feels like a chump.
May 29th, 2010 at 4:34 am
My point, Cooper, is that mom stood in countless lines.
May 29th, 2010 at 7:54 am
“when any starving potato eater or anyone else was allowed in with no limits”
Just a reminder that race, ethnicity and legal status has figured into immigration and naturalization into law as far back as 1790, when only “free whites” of “good moral character” were qualified. Asians, indentured servants, blacks, were excluded. Chinese and other Asian exclusion was further mandated well into the 20th Century and from 1921 to 1965 immigration quotas were established according to the ratios of ethnicities already resident. An “Anarchist Exclusion Act” on the books for decades. There’s always been hostility to “certain types” of immigrants and there have always been attempts to set limits on who can be a “real American.” The 14th amendment giving everyone born in the US citizenship and Supreme Court case upholding it – United States v. Wong Kim Ark – was a welcome but radical departure from the norm. Just saying – the Arizona law didn’t spring from thin air historically. Conversely, our legal immigration policies starting in the latter third of the 20th century have been pretty open and liberal.
The issues related to the long southern border needs some rational solution, but the Arizona law, an iron curtain or upping our current 12,000+ border agents and troops to a hundred thousand isn’t it. Among other things, border agents and local police need to focus on real crime, not trying to catch people who are committing a misdemeanor (OMG!) in a relentless effort to wash dishes, mow your lawn, pound a nail into a 2×4 – or in a truly worst case threaten our way of life by sitting in an emergency room or sending their kid to school. I think there are rational ways to control rampant illegal immigration (part of which would be to provide a path to citizenship for all of these “criminals” currently engaged in the vile act of Hard Work While Speaking Spanish rather than engage in futile fantasies of deporting them) but the Arizona law or political gestures like Obama’s sending 1200 National Guard to the border are asinine. As I’ve said, a modern data base for payrolling would solve as much of the illegal labor problem as needs to be solved – and liberal legal immigration along with legalization of “illegal” immigrant families would balance any labor market issues and allow a steady flow of new “real Americans” – a concept which perhaps applies better to people who struggle to come here, one way or another, than those of us born with the privilege.
For what it’s worth, there are immigrants who have assimilation issues – my grandfather was one of them. After the bitterness of WWI and, yes, the Versailles Treaty, he clung to a narrative about the perfidy of Britain, the collusion of “Yanks” and the perennial “victimization” of the German people (granted he lost his job as a preacher at the hands of the American Legion because he couldn’t preach in English) that he wouldn’t believe what his sons tried to tell him about the nature of Nazism – thought it was all propaganda. He was lucky he was an old, cranky man – my dad had to warn the neighbors about him – or “they” might have come and taken him away. Most German-Americans engaged in “hyper-assimilation” after the nasty experience of WWI (among other things, a large German-language press was effectively “disappeared”) – but he refused. Kind of a crazy, bitter guy who I was totally put off by as a small child, which is probably why I’m not attracted to “ethnocentrism” of any sort. My “undesireable immigrant” story – yeah, Grandpa!
May 29th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Marc, obviously you didn’t read my earlier comment:
May 29th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
“My point, Cooper, is that mom stood in countless lines.”
But that does not matter, Bob Williams. Your mom does not matter. Not really. According to those who promote sanctuary cities and can’t stand to see any law regarding illegals enforced, the rights of the illegals are more important than the rights of American citizens. We are simply supposed to open the borders to any and all who want to be here, and expect nothing from them. and give them all the benefits that others played by the rules to obtain.
The mentality of many in this movement was revealed during the first huge demonstration in support of Illegals several years ago. The vast sea of Mexican flags told the story more than any words. When American public opinion obviously disapproved of this, the planners realized their big mistake, and the cynics urged everyone to carry American flags at future demonstrations. Now, when I see all of those American flags, I return the cynicism in full measure.
The people who stand in lines for visas do not count. The people who do everything they need to do to become legal U.S. citizens do not matter. The people who have properties in the border states that are trashed and trespassed by illegals do not enter into the equation at all . The victims of identity theft and other crimes committed by illegals simply do not matter. They are sneered at and worse, regarded as racists if they object to ILLEGAL immigration.
May 29th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
A fine conservative whine.
May 30th, 2010 at 10:03 am
One of the worst things about this bill is the way it takes responsibility for professional, effective prioritizing of police resources away from the police departments and police chiefs:
A clause of the bill, signed last week by Governor Jan Brewer, allows Arizona citizens to file suit against any government entity that “adopts or implements a policy or practice that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law.”
In other words, Arizonans can sue government entities, state or local, if they believe those entities aren’t fully enforcing the law — including, of course, this new law itself. The government could be on the hook for penalties as high as $5000 per day.
That kind of explicit permission to sue the government for not enforcing the law is almost unheard of, according to Mark Miller, a professor at the University of Arizona Law School. “This kind of … private right of action for an executive decision,” — that is, a law enforcement policy adopted by the government — “is to my knowledge completely unknown, and to my mind, stunning,” Miller told TPMmuckraker. (TPM – April 28)
This bill is nutty – wingnuttery made law – and anyone who thinks that legislation designed explicitly written to increase law suits against police departments over their routine policing practices if they don’t round up enough illegal immigrants is a fucking lunatic. Rightwingers are children. Maturbatory, “feel good about myself” nincompoops. Driven by petty resentments and narrow guage thinking. It’s why the country is as fucked as it is.
May 30th, 2010 at 10:06 am
When you stop and think about that clause of the law – and consider if it were applied to every statute on the books – the mind reels at just how stupid the bill’s supporters (assuming they actually know what’s in the damned thing) happen to be. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. No wonder the police chiefs – men with real responsibilities beyond bundling their resentments into internet comments – think this law sucks.
June 3rd, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Thats great stuff you’ve written up on your blog. Had been looking for articles on this all around. Great blog
December 1st, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Good luck to you.