Questing for Atlantis

The League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s E.D. Kain says sometimes he’s embarrassed to be an Arizonan. This is one of those times:

Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be an Arizonan. Indeed, I think I would be a far more vociferous defender of state’s rights were I a citizen of some other state. Today is one of those days:

Arizona lawmakers on Tuesday approved what foes and supporters agree is the toughest measure in the country against undocumented immigrants, making it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in Arizona and allowing local police to determine whether people are in the country legally.

Indeed, now police officers can act on a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that someone is an illegal immigrant – as though one can tell one’s immigration status simply by the color of their skin! Did you know that illegal immigrants from Mexico actuallylook different than their legal Mexican immigrant counter-parts?

It’s true.

Well, it’s true in the fictional world the Arizona state legislature is fashioning for itself. Everywhere else this is what we call a ‘police state’.

I recall friends of mine who lived illegally in Spain for a year or so. They taught English off the books. They finally left because they were afraid they’d be booted anyways. They couldn’t leave the country to travel because they wouldn’t be allowed back in. In Spain, the police can ask you for your papers at any time, for any reason. The interesting thing was that my very white friends were never asked for their papers. That was reserved for Africans and Arabs, who were hounded regularly by la policia.

Here in Arizona, I doubt I will ever be mistaken for an illegal Swedish immigrant either. I very much doubt I will ever be stopped and asked to prove my citizenship, nor do I imagine that would happen even if my accent were as thick as my grandmother’s was fresh off the boat from Norway.

But my darker-skinned friends may not be so lucky – especially the many valuable foreign and yes, illegal, workers who work in our restaurants and warehouses and fast food joints and as janitors and other hard workers in the service and manufacturing and agriculture industries.

This is the governance of fear in action. The petty populist and reactionary forces in this state have finally scored a real victory. And while our budget rests on a precipice, our so-called lawmakers – those we have entrusted with ourgovernance – would rather legislate to the popular sentiment than make the hard decisions necessary to actually run a damn government. Far better to go after the Mexicans than to actually balance the bloody budget.

While I’ve hit on the drier side of these dangers (mostly E-Verify false positives), the pernicious racial element of these sorts of proposals are probably worse. Plus there’s that whole “First they came for the Jews…” bit to keep in mind too.

I can only hope people will someday start thinking about that before they keep spouting off about the need for “increased enforcement.”