If Only the Problem Were Just Arizona's Bigoted Immigration Law, But It's Bigger and Darker

http://www.alternet.org/immigration/146703/if_only_the_problem_were_just_arizona%27s_bigoted_immigration_law%2C_but_it%27s_bigger_and_darker_than_that


If Only the Problem Were Just Arizona's Bigoted Immigration Law, But It's Bigger and Darker Than That
Arizona's anti-immigrant hysteria is another symptom of a political virus that can’t be quarantined and whose cure is as yet unknown.

by Frank Rich May 2, 2010


<snip>

If many of Arizona’s defenders and critics hold one belief in common, it’s that the new “show me your papers” law is sui generis: it’s seen as one angry border state’s response to its outsized share of America’s illegal immigration crisis. But to label this development “Arizona’s folly” trivializes its import and reach. The more you examine the law’s provisions and proponents, the more you realize that it’s the latest and (so far) most vicious battle in a far broader movement that is not just about illegal immigrants — and that is steadily increasing its annexation of one of America’s two major political parties.

Arizonans, like all Americans, have every right to be furious about Washington’s protracted and bipartisan failure to address the immigration stalemate. To be angry about illegal immigration is hardly tantamount to being a bigot. But the Arizona law expressing that anger is bigoted, and in a very particular way. The law dovetails seamlessly with the national “Take Back America” crusade that has attended the rise of Barack Obama and the accelerating demographic shift our first African-American president represents.

The crowd that wants Latinos to show their papers if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality is often the same crowd still demanding that the president produce a document proving his own citizenship. Lest there be any doubt of that confluence, Rush Limbaugh hammered the point home after Obama criticized Arizona’s action. “I can understand Obama being touchy on the subject of producing your papers,” he said. “Maybe he’s afraid somebody’s going to ask him for his.” Or, as Glenn Beck chimed in about the president last week: “What has he said that sounds like American?”

To the “Take Back America” right, the illegitimate Obama is Illegal Alien No. 1. It’s no surprise that of the 35 members of the Arizona House who voted for the immigration law (the entire Republican caucus), 31 voted soon after for another new law that would require all presidential candidates to produce birth certificates to qualify for inclusion on the state’s 2012 ballot. With the whole country now watching Arizona, that “birther” bill was abruptly yanked Thursday.


..more..

Thanks for bringing this. K & R

by their economic condition. And the corporatocracy has successfully used its stooges in the media to identify scapegoats for downwardly mobile white middle class Americans. Illegal (and by extension, even legal) immigrants, they're the reason your life has turned to shit.

And most of them don't even realize they're being manipulated by the same people who are responsible for a lot of the illegals being in the country in the first place.

And they'll defend the people who have been screwing them over for at least 30 years.

It isn't the people coming into the country that is the problem, it's the jobs going out...

simply take a gander at WHO WROTE IT.

Rachel 'splains it all.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#36881928

just brings me to our her front page.
:-( :hi:

You GOTTA SEE THIS!!! :bounce:

"Following Dan Stein, Correcting the Record"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#36881928

thank you!

:hug: :hi:

by a communist panic.

e.g. alien & sedition acts, chinese exclusion acts, emergency quota act, mexican repatriation, palmer raids, mccarran act, etc.

It uses anger on this issue or that to pretend legitimacy but underlying it all is something dark.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/201004300066?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mediamatters%2Flatest+%28Media+Matters+-+Latest+Items%29


This week we saw the right-wing media scramble to defend the law, grasping for every possible angle. For example: (links included)

Fox News' Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin dismissed the possibility that the law will lead to racial profiling, calling the claim "shameful."

Fox News' Steven Crowder, Greg Gutfeld, Michael Malkin, Brit Hume, and radio host Mike Gallagher embraced and defended the law, including the potential for racial profiling. Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, for example, said that "people may have to endure some inconvenience."

Meanwhile, Fox & Friends' Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy, National Review's Rich Lowry, and CNN's Jack Cafferty all pretended that the Arizona law is very similar to federal immigration law, and therefore uncontroversial.

Carlson did her part by dismissing all the critics of the law as the "left" -- presumably including such known lefties as Joe Scarborough, Charles Krauthammer, and Andrew Napolitano.

With no place left to go but down, The Washington Times, The Drudge Report, Glenn Beck, Brian Kilmeade, and Pat Buchanan defended the bill by making incendiary and racially charged rhetoric and imagery.

And, naturally, Lowry and the Washington Examiner blamed Obama.

Apparently unable to defend what the Arizona law actually said, some conservatives simply pretended it said something else. Specifically, they claimed that the term "lawful contact" in the legislation meant that law enforcement could only investigate the immigration status of people already suspected of committing an unrelated offense. Media Matters contacted an Arizona House Republican research analyst to debunk the claim. The analyst clarified that "lawful contact" included crime victims, witnesses, "or just people who are lawfully interacting with the police officer." Other experts said the same thing. The Arizona legislature subsequently voted to change the law's language, replacing the phrase "lawful contact" with "lawful stop, detention or arrest."

on my side of the pond? I find them an interesting corollary.