(MintPress) – The highly contested immigration law in Arizona has formally gone into effect, putting into practice legislation that has stoked fears of racial profiling and targeting those based on outward appearance. That scenario has already played itself out over 2,000 miles away from Arizona in North Carolina, where an investigation turned up routine racial profiling against Latinos in efforts by police personnel to combat illegal immigration.
Recently, a federal judge authorized provisions of Arizona’s SB1070 law, challenged by the administration of President Barack Obama, that allow for police to question the immigration status of individuals whom they encounter while carrying out their day-by-day law enforcement duties, commonly referred to as the “show me your papers” provision of the law.
Arizona’s governor, Republican Jan Brewer, urged U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton to let the law go into effect because opponents’ claims of racial profiling was only speculation and said she expects the law to be enforced “efficiently, effectively and in harmony with the Constitution and civil rights.”
But racial profiling is a large concern within the Latino community, particularly after the rise of what the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls “extremist rhetoric” moving into mainstream immigration debate. The organization argues that the political climate has vilified immigration into the United States, thus creating resentment toward Latinos, the second largest immigration base in the U.S. after Asians.
“Serious policy questions remain about the best way to reform America’s immigration system but the debate has also been framed, at times, by vitriolic anti-immigrant – and particularly anti-Latino – rhetoric and propaganda,” the ADL has said. “Purveyors of this extremist rhetoric use stereotypes and outright bigotry to target immigrants and hold them responsible for numerous societal ills.”
Rooted in racism?
As a result, 6 in 10 Latinos now cite discrimination as a “major problem,” according to a Pew Research Center poll. The study also shows that 36 percent of Latinos believe that immigration status is the most important factor leading to discrimination. And while Latinos continually cite the economy as the biggest issue heading into the presidential election, Sylvia Manzano, a senior analyst at the polling firm Latino Decisions, said laws like those in Arizona incessantly suggest immigration as the most worrisome problem.
“Latinos say that immigration is not the most important issue, but if Republicans keep talking about it and talking about it in a way that is offensive, then it starts to become a cue,” Manzano said.
To an extent, Arizona’s SB1070 did just that by consuming headlines and becoming a hot topic of discussion at this year’s Republican presidential candidate debates. But it did all that in a time when net immigration figures from Mexico are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to Douglas Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University.
Pew Hispanic Center figures also show that illegal Mexican immigration has been on the decline, with fewer than 100,000 illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. in 2010, compared to the 525,000 that came to the U.S. annually between 2000 and 2004. The figures beg the question of whether immigration laws like those in Arizona are legislating against outdated trends.
Human rights experts with the United Nations (U.N.) expressed concern over the Arizona law, saying it applies “vague standards” to immigration validation and was written with a “disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants.”
“The law may lead to detaining and subjecting to interrogation persons primarily on the basis of their perceived ethnic characteristics,” the U.N. said. “In Arizona, persons who appear to be of Mexican, Latin American or indigenous origins are especially at risk of being targeted under the law.”
In July, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released thousands of emails from Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, the man behind the law, that suggested the legislation was racially motivated. A collection of Pearce’s emails demonstrated racial hostility not only to Latinos and Hispanics, but other races and nationalities as well.
“Can we maintain our social fabric as a nation with Spanish fighting English for dominance … It’s like importing leper colonies and hope we don’t catch leprosy,” Pearce wrote. “It’s like importing thousands of Islamic jihadists and hope they adapt to the American Dream.”
Similar practice in North Carolina
A recent two-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found that North Carolina Sheriff Terry Johnson and his fellow deputies were violating the constitutional rights of legal citizens by illegally targeting Latinos and arresting them without probable cause to quell what Johnson thought was an illegal immigration problem in the state. Ironically, what Johnson was illegally doing in North Carolina was, to some degree, made legal in Arizona – begging the question of the court system’s consistency with constitutional rights rulings.
While Johnson said neither he nor his deputies discriminated against Latinos in any way, the DOJ investigation quoted Johnson as calling Mexicans “taco eaters” and instructing his supervisors to lobby for arresting Latinos instead of giving them written citations. In 2007, five years after assuming the role of Alamance County sheriff, Johnson was quoted by a newspaper as saying he credited his hardline policies to the decrease in the areas Latino population.
Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ, Thomas Perez, said the investigation showed that Johnson fostered a racist attitude within the department that permeated itself throughout its law enforcement policies.
“The discriminatory conduct we observed is deeply rooted in a culture that begins with Sheriff Johnson and permeates the entire agency,” Perez said. “While Sheriff Johnson often justifies (his department’s) activities by citing his desire to combat illegal immigration, we conclude that anti-Latino bias motivates his selection and enforcement of enforcement priorities.”
The North Carolina chapter of the ACLU argued that the findings of the investigation should speak volumes about Latino profiling and Arizona’s “show me your papers” law. The group also said the discriminatory practices can become a “systemic problem” in states that make immigration out to be a larger problem than it really is.