Okay, it’s pretty bad for Arizona when even Tom Tancredo says Arizona’s anti-immigrant “show me your papers” law is wrong. TOM TANCREDO?!? — the ranting Mexican-hating, former congressman from Colorado! (Tom is most recently infamous for the following sentiment delivered at a Tea Party: “The President should be sent ‘back’ to Kenya.”)
Add to that: Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and former Republican congressman from Florida (and Newt Gingrich acolyte), said this morning on the air that the Arizona law requiring Americans to carry proof of citizenship papers (presumably only brown people) does not represent the America he’s always loved.
Well, I’m shocked. Bi-partisanship at last. Well, not actually bi-partisanship in the House or the Senate. No, sadly… Washington Republicans, even John McCain who was the original author of the last comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, is standing with Arizona’s “papers please” legislation.
Arizona is an interesting state. We lived there for almost 20 years. Our daughter was born in Phoenix and both of our kids went through Arizona public schools. It’s conservative, of course, but not usually the hateful kind, rather the residents of Arizona lean more to the libertarian side of the conservative movement. Arizona is the home state of Barry Goldwater, a one-time Republican Presidential candidate and an ultra-conservative, who actually supported Bill Clinton for president.
Conservative Barry Goldwater would never have supported the radical policies of W. — policies such as: “Deficits Don’t Matter” and “Preventive War” (you know, W.’s policy that we have a right to invade another country if we think that at some time in the future it might pose a threat to us). Never would Conservative Senator Goldwater have supported George W. Bush. Never. And, he would have been revolted by this hateful, un-american law.
In the election campaign of 2008 – 2009 Democrats felt that if John McCain were not the Republican Presidential candidate, Arizona would have been in play for Barack Obama. The previous Governor of Arizona was Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. So, we ask: What’s up with Arizona?
The national anti-immigrant mood has been stoked for the last decade by the right. It’s always easy to blame the last ones into the country. The Irish, the Italians, now Hispanics. And, the hate and demonizing has spread throughout the country. This is an ugly side of America that we don’t like to face.
Check out an op-ed, by Linda Greenhouse titled Breathing While Undocumented, in today’s New York Times Opinionator here. Linda says she is not going back to Arizona because it is now a police state. Isn’t it just ironic that the right screams that Democrats and our President are Fascists, and yet it is the right that has brought us the very first police state in America?
To be fair, the drug war being waged in Mexico is beginning to spill over into our border states, and bringing violence with it. There needs to be more done in the way of re-enforcing our borders.
We don’t know what those security efforts might look like, but one thing’s for sure: Arizona’s “papers please” law is NOT the answer.
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