On Monday, the US Supreme Court gave a divided decision on Arizona’s stringent immigration law, upholding what many see as its most controversial position, according to the New York Times.
The provisions that were blocked, centered in three areas: making it a crime, via state law, for immigrants to fail to register under a federal law, making it a crime for illegal immigrants to work or to try and find work, and allowing the police to make arrests for people without warrant, “if they have probable cause to believe that they have done things that would make them deportable under federal law.”
In considering the decision, I was especially struck that the justices did not use the equal protesting clause of the Constitution, as has been the reasoning in so many cases in the past.
Later that day I heard a panel discussion on the local NPR station with a local columnist that was originally from Arizona, but as a native offered a warning that those of us who live in Chicago, may have a different understanding of the law and Arizonians, seeing them as somehow less than progressive; when in truth she wanted listeners to understand that as she grew up in Arizona, “that it was like Mexico’ and proceeded to share with the audience that she grew up “eating tacos”, and that when Chicago got more Latinos (code word for Mexicans) that we would somehow understand the position of those that Arizonians that crafted the law, since after all they were a border state.
So, the take-away message she was shamelessly giving, seemed to be, “Look, you just don’t know what it’s like to have to live surrounded, on all sides, by these people, and their language, and their food; and you just wait, till you feel overwhelmed by them, and then you will feel as Arizonans do and pass these laws.”
Perhaps many listeners going about their day, this was the middle of the afternoon after all , might not have paid too much attention to what was being said, in the columnists thinly veiled prejudice, but I was appalled to hear this from someone who previously espoused a fair, if not progressive view towards race in the past.
Conventional wisdom, however, says that many groups, despite inclusion, or assimilation, all share one “pet” prejudice, and perhaps in this case it’s true.
As the nation grows more and more progressive, and its numbers include greater waves of immigration, we are probably going to hear even more comments like those of the columnist; and, especially those who are not from Western, or even Northern Europe.
What has always struck me, as a native-born American is how while we espouse, and are quick to point out, the many opportunities and benefits of citizenship, but are also just as quick to deny others the benefits based on some ill-defined view of who is, or who is not worthy to enter our shores.
While I am not suggesting that anyone should break the law to enter the country, it seems time that a national conversation be held on just how, and even when, immigration should be handled; whether legal, or illegal.
Perhaps we are not as far removed from the prejudices of Ellis Island, as we have thought, as it now seems that anyone who immigrates to the U.S., especially if they are of Hispanic origin is somehow illegal, and even illegitimate.
Another anecdote: in my not too distant past, while working in Washington, DC, my somewhat imperious female boss noted that when she travelled to New Jersey, all that she saw were Indians (from Southeast Asia) and that their presence, in such high numbers, was surely a sign that, “They are taking over.”
If racial prejudice and even xenophobia rule our hearts, and minds, then how, can we possible evolve into that city on the hill, that early English puritan settlers noted, or even the New Jerusalem, prominently featured as part of even a secular revelation?
My late father used the old maxim: “As much as things change they remain the same.”
Dear old Dad, was right about more than he probably thought.
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