New police powers: A new immigration law in Arizona becomes effective on June 29th that will allow police to stop anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. without authorization and creates a new crime for failing to carry documents.
The ILWU is challenging Arizona’s controversial new immigration law that empowers police to detain anyone they suspect of being in the country without authorization. The law also gives police the right to demand proof of legal residency and creates a new crime for failing to carry proof of citizenship or immigration papers.
The ILWU’s has filed a “friend of the court” document, known as an “Amicus brief,” that argues the Arizona law is a dangerous threat to everyone’s civil liberties and Constitutional rights.
“The Arizona law encourages racial profiling and discrimination” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath. “The ILWU has direct experience with unfair immigration laws that were used in the past to harass and discriminate against union members, including our former President, Harry Bridges. We want the courts to know how these laws can hurt union people and threaten everyone’s civil rights.”
Other unions are also criticizing the law and taking action. Hundreds of union, religious, and community leaders from Southern California are joining a protest being coordinated by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor on July 29, the first day that the new law takes effect. Activists, including ILWU members, will travel on buses to Arizona where they will deliberately defy the law by refusing to carry identification documents and challenge authorities to arrest them for violating the state’s new immigration policy.
Five chartered buses will carry an estimated 250 protestors, including ILWU Local 13 Vice President Bobby Olvera, who’s planning to join the action. “I’m going to protest because this is the beginning of racial profiling at its worst. I don’t believe in singling people out, based on the color of their skin.”
Olvera is encouraging other ILWU members to join him for the protest. Arizona’s new law was passed after agitation by right-wing groups, including “Tea Party” activists, who have had success moving a number of conservative causes, including:
- Prohibiting scientists from experimenting with stem cells to cure diseases.
- Banning the teaching of ethnic studies classes in public schools.
- Allowing guns, including concealed weapons, to be carried into bars.
- Barring President Obama from appearing on the Arizona ballot unless he produces a birth certificate.
But the most controversial claim is that immigrants arriving without documents are causing a crime wave along the border. Conservative TV and radio commentator Bill O’Reilly has fueled the fire by claiming that Arizona is “overrun with crime and everything else and people getting slaughtered on their ranches. I mean, it’s insane.”
The facts from the latest FBI crime statistics show these claims to be false. Violent crime in Arizona declined significantly in 2009 and fell in south- western border counties that now enjoy some of the lowest crime levels in the nation per capita – a decline of more than 30% in the last two decades.
The four largest U.S. cities with the lowest rates of violent crime are all located in border states: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Arizona’s has had a problem separating fact and fiction when it comes to crime and immigration, noting that violent crime rates “plunged 16.6 percent in Phoenix, despite a perception of rising crime that has fueled an immigration backlash.”
The FBI’s crime decline numbers at the border are confirmed by statistics gathered from the U.S. Border Patrol, which found assaults on their agents declined more than 300% last year -and most of those incidents involved rock-throwing instead of knives and guns that were used in previous years. The same holds true nationwide; crime rates across the United States declined in 2009, dropping steadily during the past decade to the lowest levels since the 1950’s and 60’s.
Despite the dramatic decline in crime, efforts to blame immigrants on an imaginary crime wave continue to be a staple of right-wing politics. Many conservative politicians find it easier to score points with the public by railing against crime and immigrants insteadof offering real solutions to the double-digit unemployment that is punishing America’s working families. “Blaming other people for our problems at home is an old story,” says President Bob McEllrath. “A few decades ago, they blamed everything on the Communists, and today they’re going after immigrants and people with brown skin. We can’t let this kind of finger-pointing and scapegoating go unchallenged, because it can become a real cancer on our country.”
While ten other states are now considering immigration laws that copy Arizona’s approach, there is reason for hope. A recent Gallup poll found that just 51% of the public supports the new law in Arizona, and pollsters say that number could easily drop if the law is challenged and problems with civil liberties are exposed. Former Bush advisor, Karl Rove, has expressed doubt about the constitutionality of the Arizona law, and he knows the political risks of alienating Latino voters is something to be taken seriously, even if it now provides the raw meat for the hard-right conservative base.
Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, says the Arizona law amounts to racial profiling against Latinos. Durazo held a press conference last month to condemn the Arizona law, surrounded by Latino union members, noting: “You can’t tell by looking at us who was born here, who has a green card, who served their country in the armed forces, who works hard every day, pays their taxes, raises a family, sends their kids to school and helps them with their homework.”
Part of the solution, Durazo says, is for Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that provides a path to legal residency for 11 million immigrant workers. The ILWU supports this approach and developments in Arizona may bring the issue to a head sooner than anyone expected.