Arizona SB1070, the Continuing War Against the Mexicano People
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
Recently the Arizona state legislature passed, and Governor Jan Brewer signed into law, SB1070, as of now the most draconian law passed directed at undocumented immigrants.
Arizona Senate Bill 1070 makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Arizona became the first state in the U.$. to criminalize illegal immigrants, making it a crime to have no papers. It requires police to ask ?anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally? to produce an ?alien registration document,? such as a green card. Those who do not or cannot are charged with a Class 1 misdemeanor and face a minimum $500 fine. And as a bone to the vigilantes, it allows citizens to sue police for not enforcing the new law.
The impact of this law will obviously lead to racial profiling. The common perception of an ?illegal alien? in the United Snakes is of a brown-skinned Mexican Latino, whether legal citizen or not. The many white-skinned ?illegal aliens? will not feel the brunt of this law. The darker-skinned and poorer migrant peoples will, as in the past, bear the brunt of this new law.
This law has been celebrated by the right-wing forces who never find it hard to mobilize when the target is Mexicans and other non-white peoples. The presidency of Obama has ignited the proto-fascist and white populist Tea Party movement with its settler-nativism undertones. Even John McCain, who had in the past submitted immigration reform legislation, came out for the law while facing a tough primary campaign against a more right-wing opponent. This law will also encourage more hate crimes, harassment and violence against non-white populations, specifically those deemed Mexican.
This law has created divisions within Amerikan polity. The Obama administration opportunistically came out against the law, even as ICE raids and deportations have increased against migrant populations under Obama?s watch. Even some law ?enforcement? officials have objected to it. The ACLU and other groups are pursuing legal actions to bring down this law. An unintended impact is the May Day mass mobilizations that it created in response. Just on the verge of May Day, which has been revived in the U.S. due to migration activism, hundreds of thousands have participated in marches, school walkouts, and other actions against the new law. A boycott Arizona campaign is underway. The response is seen by many liberals as a boost for their efforts at ?comprehensive immigration reform.? But history shows that this law is only the latest in the war against the occupied Chicano and Mexicano people.
The law and the reaction to it is nothing new. Back in 2006, proposed national legislation to criminalize undocumented peoples sparked some of the largest mass mobilizations of people in U.S. history and increased national consciousness from Chicano and Mexicano peoples. In 1994 the passage of Proposition 187, which forbade migrants without documents from obtaining public services and encouraged racial profiling of Latinos, was met with walkouts, protests, and boycotts, not only in California, but across the nation. In fact, Chicano and Mexicano people have faced repression from their occupiers and waging resistance to their oppression since 1848, since the United States forcefully took the lands of northern Mexico in war. The aftermath of the war imposed an illegitimate border in this region, a border that gringo occupiers want to increasingly militarize today. The land, labor, and resources the United Snakes annexed were used to continue to build the Amerikan empire. This imperial reach extends throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America today.
The imperialist exploitation by the United States and the First World powers against the Third World masses creates a crisis of migration. As the First World populations, including the so-called First World ?working class,? become bigger exploiters, demand for real labor increases. As exploitation and oppression cause economic crisis in the Third World, many in the Third World seek to migrate to First World nations to escape poverty and oppression. The First World is where stolen capital is accumulated and work is available for lower wages than would be paid to its labor aristocracy population, while still enabling Third World migrants to receive higher wages than they would receive in their home countries. Remittances are a major source of income for a good many Third World nations.
The United States situation is slightly different in that both the land it stole and the labor it solicits have historical ties. The irony now is that European-descended settler population that migrated west to secure the Empire?s new bounty now goes into a tizzy, telling those who have more ties to the continent than they do that they do not belong on the land. At the same time that the Amerikan elites are trying to accommodate new migrants with citizenship reforms due to the inevitable change in demographics, a reactionary settler population calls for repression and genocide against non-whites.
Arizona is a particularly reactionary state even for the United States. It opposed the establishment of a holiday celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. until forced to concede by outside pressure from other States and people to observe it. It has been an incubator for right-wing anti-Mexican vigilantism that led up to the Minutemen. Recently a Minutemen faction led by Shawna Forde murdered both Raul Flores Jr. and his 9-year-daughter Brisenia in a home invasion they committed to finance more anti-Mexican attacks.(1) The neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement has held many rallies in Arizona lately. The NSM leader, JT Ready, was a Republican Party precinct chairman who ran for a city council seat, and was also a former advisor to State Senator Russell Pierce, who helped draft SB1070.(2) Nazis have also been seen supporting arch-reactionary racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has gained broader right-wing support for his fascist tactics against migrants and prisoners in general.(3) One Arizona politician who opposed SB1070 stated his state was becoming the Alabama of the 21st century. Other legislation in the works seeks to ban ethnic studies courses as treasonous, and others are targeting teachers who speak with an accent.(4) (5) No doubt about it, Arizona is the king of kkkrackerdom.
The recent events in Arizona show the true face of Amerika. Arizona is also home to many First Nations, whose lands were also forcibly taken from them. These First Nations are the victims of genocide and continued national oppression. A whole settler population existing on air conditioning, SUVs, big screen TVS and other non-subtainable crap now shapes political debate in Amerika. SB1070 will likely be challenged and brought down in the courts because of it unconstitutionality. Even public pressure may aid in bringing it down. But the fact that the law was put through in the first place shows the undercurrents of imperial chauvanism that is Amerika. The nature of the imperial settler state of Amerika shows that simple liberal reforms will not eliminate the racist core of this entity. Justice will only come when Amerika and the First World are defeated, the land is returned, the imposed border is torn down, reparations paid. Justice implies a society where the land and resources are organized to benefit humanity, not just a few, privileged rich countries.
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