- AS

I can’t help but be irritated by the coverage of the ruling, however. Even the New York Times says “Calif. Court Backs Illegal Immigrants.” AB-540 was indeed intended to help ease the burden on undocumented students in California, who are ineligible for student loans. But it is misleading to characterize upholding AB-540 as “backing illegal immigrants.”  After all, the vast majority of students benefitting from AB-540 are citizens and permanent residents. (This fact is included in the case itself, which you can see here, and in the yearly reports on AB-540 – see 2009′s here.) This is not surprising, given the rising cost of UC and CSU education in California — made especially crippling without the possibility of student aid — and the stress of being undocumented generally. (If you haven’t heard it already, I highly recommend listening to This American Life’s “Nice Work if You Can Get It” episode – Act Four tells the story of an undocumented student in California.)

In the struggle to come up with a meaningful solution to the problem of millions of people who are  living, working, and studying in this country – with little legal security and few protections – AB-540 is only another stopgap, and not a long-term solution.

I must mention one other source of irritation I have RE: this case. Kris Kobach brought this lawsuit in California (and wasted our money in doing so) as part of a litigation strategy to push anti-immigrant policies at the local level. Kobach recently lost a major immigration case in Hazleton — one which required that small town to pay $2.4 million in legal fees. Enough is enough, Kobach. At a time when California is broke, and California public college students are suffering more than ever, it is unfathomable that you are wasting our time on whether or not a few undocumented students might pay a few thousand less OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS for a college education. Good grief.

- AS

-AR

This week, Fremont, Nebraska residents passed a local anti-immigrant measure that aims to ban hiring or renting to “illegal immigrants.” Unlike the laws passed in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and Farmers Branch, Texas, this law was enacted by voter referendum. Otherwise, though, the law is pretty similar to its predecessors — it requires local employers to use a federal database to check the status of employees, and bars landlords from renting to any person in the country “illegally.”

The ACLU has already announced they will be filing a lawsuit to challenge the law.

These cases will take years to make their way to the Supreme Court — the Hazleton case has been going on for about 4 years now, and for some reason the Third Circuit has still not issued its decision. So, practically speaking, it was pretty dumb of Fremont to go down this road. Considering the ACLU (not to mention MALDEF, etc.) have aggressively litigated these types of cases elsewhere — and won — Fremont is in way over its Constitutional head.

The reason these local immigration laws get shut down so readily is that our immigration laws are made by the federal government, and they are immensely complicated. I put the term illegal in quotes above because immigration status is rarely that easy to determine. Even if a person enters the country without papers, they will often acquire valid status later – through marriage, or work, or other operation of the laws.

By way of example, the New York Times recently told the incredibly moving story of a deaf man who came to the U.S. illegally in the mid-nineties and was enslaved in New York until federal prosecutors finally discovered the slavery ring. He was allowed to stay in the country, went to a school for the deaf and then a New York City jobs training program, and now has a green card and works — amazingly enough — as a janitor on Ellis Island. The journeys of immigrants are complicated, and the twists and turns of the immigration laws even more so. Suffice it so say that a town like Fremont has no idea which of its non-citizen residents will end up getting a green card if they end up in federal custody and which will be deported.

I think it also bears mentioning, though, that in addition to be misguided for the aforementioned reasons, so-called anti-immigrant measures should more accurately be called anti-Latino measures. Since immigration status is ambiguous and impossible for local officials to determine, the real purpose of laws targeting “illegals” is generally to harass and intimidate Latino residents. The picture above comes from a bar in Hazleton in 2007, and it gets republished often because it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the ubiquitous signage of the Jim Crow era. I doubt the thousands of undocumented Irish have to worry about landlords giving them a hard time.

All I can hope is that the passage of this law will put even more pressure on the Obama administration to work for meaningful immigration reform in this term.

-AS

The law was intended to shut down a couple of ethnic studies programs in Tuscon, which focus on the influence of particular ethnic groups in American history and literature. This is a big problem, according to the state schools chief, Tom Horne, because . . . wait for it . . . the program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. That just cracks me up. I mean, I hate to break it to Horne, but Latino students don’t need an ethnic studies class to know that. Rest assured, they’ll learn that lesson one way or another.

But wait, there’s more. Horne also said the presence of the ethnic studies program has created an environment in Tuscon schools that is “just like the old South.” Whoa there! Looks like the Horne-ster may have been the product of America’s Failing Public Schools himself! Brief refresher. Old South: Lynching. Racial terrorism. School segregation. Jim Crow. Violence. KKK. Literacy tests. And most importantly? Notable absence of ethnic studies programs.

It says a lot about the pitiable state of things in Arizona that the man in charge of schools (the chief, no less) believes in pacifying students by teaching them complete nonsense. It takes a special kind of educator to get behind a program that seeks not to teach.

The ACLU has already argued the law violates the First Amendment and is hopelessly vague. Presumably, Horne’s going to be a little biased when he decides what classes “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” But look. Isn’t a history class that excludes the perspectives of ethnic minorities in America designed primarily for white people? Maybe the real problem with the law is that, if taken seriously, it could knock out 99% of all public education in Arizona for lack of racial bias.

Finally — isn’t overthrow of the U.S. government more of an after-school club?

-AS

As has been discussed previously on this blog, no one can really can say what gives rise to a reasonable suspicion that a person is undocumented.  This lack of a non-racial basis for determining what raises reasonable suspicion renders the ban on racial profiling dead letter.  Without articulable standards, an officer has broad leeway to invent whatever reasons he chooses for finding a particular person suspicious, and as long as he avoids saying, “Well, doesn’t she Mexican to you?” it will be nearly impossible to prove that the ban on racial profiling has been violated.  The lack of articulable standards also means that enforcement of the law will be imprecise, and many people will be asked for papers who are American citizens or legal residents.  Because being Latino is a baseline requirement for suspicion of being undocumented in Arizona, whether we admit it or not and regardless of whatever other factors may or may not exist, this burden will be borne solely by the Latino community even if police officers act in good faith and do not target anyone solely for being Latino.

The “the bill doesn’t allow racial profiling because we say it doesn’t allow racial profiling” argument follows similar logic to the infamous John Yoo “what we’re doing isn’t torture because I’m telling you it isn’t torture, and in any case the United States doesn’t torture anyone ’cause that would be illegal” memos.  Given the racial dynamic to this issues, perhaps a better analogy would be the “separate but equal” fiction that American law recognized in the nine decades between the adoption of the 14th Amendment and Brown v. Board of Education.  Much like the Arizona bill’s “no racial profiling, honest” provision, the separate but equal doctrine lent segregation a sheen of neutrality that was completely detached from the reality of what motivated Jim Crow laws and how they were actually experienced.   Sure, blacks can’t go to white schools, but whites can’t go to black schools either, so who really gets to complain?  Fortunately, the Warren Court intervened in Brown, saying, in essence, “Jesus Christ, you fucking assholes!”

In full disclosure, I myself have not read the entirety of the Arizona’s immigration law.  Nor have I read the actual text of, for example, Mississippi’s pre-Brown school segregation laws.  I have no hesitation about condemning either.

-AR

But it’s important to step back, take a deep breath, and remember that this bitter old panderer could be our danged president instead:

-AR

I wholeheartedly support the decisions of state and local governments to boycott Arizona in order to protest that state’s new  anti-immigrant law. Unfortunately, after reviewing Gawker’s helpful guide to the boycott, I realized I have unknowingly been on a lifelong boycott of Arizona and all things Arizonan. The only thing about boycotting Arizona that really gives me pause is the Grand Canyon, but honestly a gorge is a gorge.

-AS

In case you haven’t heard, Brown got caught calling a British woman named Gillian Duffy a bigot when he didn’t realize his microphone was still on.

Several things are funny/infuriating about this story. First, Brown called Duffy a bigot after a conversation on the street in which Duffy made this somewhat remark about immigrants: “You can’t say anything about the immigrants because all these eastern Europeans, where they are flocking from?”

Although Duffy’s question does not literally make much sense – I mean, presumably she knows that “all these eastern Europeans” are flocking from eastern Europe – Brown understood her to be complaining about the same sort of thing the Duffys of America like to complain about, except regarding “the Mexicans.” So let’s see, that type of complaint is generally associated with . . . what is the word I’m looking for here? It means being impartial to your own group, like maybe your own racial or ethnic group, and intolerant of those who differ?

So Brown was pretty justified in referring to this woman as a bigot, especially because he was polite enough not to say it to her face. But now he’s been forced to apologize, which is the second thing that is infuriating/hilarious about this story. The third thing is Brown’s non-apology apology, which AR would just love.

My absolute favorite thing about this story, though, is that when confronted with the news that Brown had called her a bigot, Duffy did not know what the term meant. But then she complained about Brown by implying that calling someone a ‘bigot’ is ignorant: “He’s an educated person. Why is he coming at me with words like that?” Classic.

In honor of “Bigotgate,” then, let’s all have fun justifiably calling someone or something a bigot today. I pick Arizona’s Russell Pierce. You? Remember: it’s even more fun if the person might not know what the term ‘bigot’ means.

-AS

Q: What does an illegal immigrant look like?

A: [Awkwardly laughs.] I do not know. I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I can tell you that there are people in Arizona who assume they know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I don’t know if they know that for a fact or not. But I know that if AZ Post gets theirselves together, works on this law, puts down the description, that the law will be enforced civilly, fairly, and without discriminatory, uh, points to it.”

Try not to enforce that law with discriminatory, uh, points, Arizona. Ouch!

-AS