MIGRATION-US
"You're a Criminal Just
Because You're Brown-Skinned"
By IPS Correspondents*
PHOENIX, Arizona (IPS) - Critics
of Arizona's new immigration law, which
requires police to question people they
suspect to be undocumented immigrants,
say "reasonable suspicion" boils down to
having brown skin and looking Latino.
The law, known as S.B. 1070 or the
"Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe
Neighbourhood Act", signed Friday by the
Republican governor of the southwestern
state, Jan Brewer, makes it a crime to
be in the state illegally and allows
state police to question and arrest
people without a warrant if there is
"reasonable suspicion" about their
immigration status.
"Looking Latino" would apply, for
example, to 31-year-old Shirley,
originally from the southern Mexican
state of Guerrero. She has been living
in the United States for more than 12
years, but has now explained to her
daughter that they may have to leave the
country.
"Mamá, if we go to Mexico, we won't have
anything there," her daughter told her.
"You brought me here when I was little,
and I don't know anything about life
there."
She "is our main concern; we want her to
go to the university and have a
profession, but if we have to go, we
don't know what will happen," Shirley
told IPS.
The Mexican government doesn't know what
is going to happen either -- just as it
has not known for the past decade,
despite the fact that there are at least
10 million Mexicans living and working
in the U.S., including 6.5 million
undocumented immigrants, according to
the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security.
"We are taking action, and we will
continue to do so," Mexican President
Felipe Calderón said.
So far, Mexico's foreign ministry has
posted a travel alert for "all Mexicans
visiting, living, or studying in the
state of Arizona." The ministry urged
Mexican nationals to carry their
documents with them at all times in
Arizona, where there will be a "negative
political environment" for Mexican
visitors and migrants.
But "much more effective efforts and
better diplomacy are needed," Amanda
González, head of migration issues at
the Citizen's Initiative for the
Promotion of Culture and Dialogue, a
Mexican civil society group, told IPS.
"It is a question of understanding the
dynamics of how we could influence
policy-making in the United States."
In its weekly newspaper "Desde la Fe",
the Mexican Catholic Church especially
lashed out at Mexico's foreign ministry,
demanding "more intense and effective
efforts" to curb the "abuses" committed
against Mexican immigrants in the U.S.
At least since 2000, when Calderón's
predecessor Vicente Fox took office,
Mexico has been waiting for Washington
to make good on its promise for a broad,
in-depth debate on immigration reform.
In the meantime, fences along the border
have gone up at a fast pace, along with
deportations, cuts in social services
and more and more restrictive policies.
Even if the U.S. Congress discusses
immigration reform this year, Mexico
would not be free of its worst
nightmare: that the new law in Arizona
will set the tone around the country.
Calderón's stance "is 'we don't want to
annoy them'," activist María García, of
the Chicago-based Movimiento Binacional
por la Esperanza (Binational Movement
for Hope), told IPS. "There should be
bilateral measures, but based on serious
agreements."
When he meets in May with U.S. President
Barack Obama, Calderón will have a
chance to show what position he plans to
take.
In Phoenix, the state capital of
Arizona, there are also many people
thinking about what they plan to do --
but in terms of how they will survive
without being arrested, thrown into jail
and deported.
For starters, "we won't call the police
anymore, even if we need them,"
Griselda, 38, remarked to IPS.
"Everything is fear now, with this new
law."
Others are simply thinking of leaving.
"In our community many people are
thinking of moving away," said Antonio
Velázquez, 35, who is originally from
the town of Ixchiguán in southwest
Guatemala.
Velázquez's phone rang off the hook all
day Monday. "One of the main questions
is: can I drive people to work?" said
the representative of Maya Chapín, a
community organisation that brings
together more than 20,000 Guatemalans in
Phoenix.
The question is not an idle one: SB 1070
also makes it a crime to transport
undocumented immigrants.
"Many are saying it's better for us to
leave, because they don't want us here
and they're slamming the doors shut,"
Velázquez said.
"It's sad that the Republicans are doing
these things and that they don't stop to
think that immigrants have sweated so
that they themselves have food on their
table," he added.
According to a report by the University
of Arizona's Udall Centre for Studies in
Public Policy, immigrant workers in the
state generated about 44 billion
dollars, or 12 percent of Arizona's
economic output, in 2004.
The state's 35,100 Latino-owned
businesses had sales and receipts of 4.3
billion dollars and employed over 39,300
people in 2002, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau’s Survey of Business
Owners.
But it's not about money -- or is it? In
Velázquez's view, the state authorities
"simply see immigrants as
extraterrestrials."
In Guatemala, the sense of indignation
is being voiced in protests and marches.
"Xenophobic" and "racist" are the terms
most often heard to describe the new
law.
"It criminalises migration and foments
xenophobia, discrimination, hatred,
racism and persecution of immigrants,"
Marila de Prinz, executive secretary of
the Mesa Nacional para las Migraciones
en Guatemala (National Forum on
Migration in Guatemala - MENAMIG), told
IPS.
The activist announced that a mass
protest was being organised for
Saturday, May 1, which is celebrated as
International Workers' Day around the
world, but not in the U.S.
"The governor is ignoring her
conscience," Víctor Hugo Herrera, who
was himself deported from the United
States, told IPS in the Guatemalan
capital. "The only thing people are
doing there is working and struggling
honestly."
That's what he was doing at the
Agriprocessors meat packing plant in
Postville, a small town in the
midwestern U.S. state of Iowa. That is,
until he was arrested and put in jail
for four months along with 388 other
immigrants accused of using false Social
Security numbers, before he was deported
in October 2008.
Two weeks ago he found work as a
farmhand in Guatemala, earning four
dollars a day. "The situation here is
really tough," he complained. But he
added that "I wouldn't go back to the
United States illegally."
A total of 7,433 Guatemalans have been
deported from the United States by plane
so far this year, and 27,222 were
deported last year, according to
Guatemala's Directorate General of
Immigration.
The Arizona law applies to anyone whose
appearance gives rise to "reasonable
suspicion."
"They consider you a criminal just
because you are brown-skinned," María
Alanis, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen who
was born in Mexico, told IPS in Phoenix.
For that reason, "this is the worst day
in the history of immigrants in this
country," Alanis said Friday, Apr. 23,
when Governor Brewer signed the bill
into law.
"And I don't know if they've forgotten
about history, but this state is one of
immigrants," she added. Of the 6.5
million people in the state, 1.3 million
are foreign-born.
But while she spoke of a sense of
"impotence," she also said she felt "the
courage to keep forging ahead, to keep
fighting, because we have to beat this.
What doesn't kill you makes you
stronger."
* With reporting by Danilo Valladares
(Guatemala City), Emilio Godoy (Mexico
City) and Valeria Fernández (Phoenix,
Arizona). |
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