Religion and Social Problems by Titus Hjelm

Author:Titus Hjelm [Hjelm, Titus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415849296
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2013-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Contemporary Debate over the Arizona Governor’s Immigration Law SB 1070

In order to fight what they believe is the criminalization of Latin American immigrants in particular and Latinos in general, Mahony and Rodriguez have taken to the streets again to protest the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s SB 1070, which was signed into law April 23, 2010. The new law, one of the strictest in the U.S., would enable law enforcement officials and the courts to identify, prosecute, and deport illegal immigrants. The Governor and her supporters stated that the law was put into effect because President Obama and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano did nothing to secure the border with Mexico and protect Americans from violent drug-cartel related crime, the murder of Arizona ranchers and the kidnapping and rape of young women by undocumented immigrants, and because nothing was being done to curtail the flow of the estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona. Brewer stated that the new law “represents another tool for our state to … solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.” She went on to state the new law “protects all of us.” The new law requires state and local police officers to detain and arrest immigrants unable to provide legal documentation and it also makes it a crime to transport and hire undocumented and day laborers. This does not mean they would stop every Latino, just those with “reasonable suspicion.” This law is part of a much larger and quieter wave of immigration reform sweeping across the U.S. wherein since 2007 hundreds of laws or bills have been proposed and/ or passed. In 2009 alone, over 222 immigration laws were enacted and 131 resolutions have been passed in 48 states, most of them conservative in nature (Schwartz 2010: 1–2; Archibold 2010: 1–4).

The struggle over immigration reform and the criminalization of Latin American immigrants as law breakers and a group that engages in other criminal activity disproportionately per their percentage of the U.S. population may also have distinct racial undertones and implications, which if not properly addressed may in turn lead to greater racial tensions in the future. The distinction between a tiny criminal element (which can be found in any large population) and the larger population of largely law-abiding immigrants is often overlooked. While the larger goal of stopping drug cartels, kidnappers, and organized crime is laudable, by not always making careful distinctions, it nonetheless also results in a kind of de facto criminalization of an entire population and class of people, creating a perennial “Other” and a subpopulation thereafter classified as a social problem.

This is no doubt part of the reason why the political and public outcry to the Arizona law was immediate. President Obama called the new law “misguided” and strategically sought to capitalize on the event by arguing that this law proved that what was really needed was comprehensive immigration reform, which detractors have called general amnesty. Latino civil rights activists like

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