Inhuman legality: on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and a call to boycott Arizona
Inhuman legality: on Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and a call to boycott Arizona
A Red and Black column by Agustín Palacios
The recent anti-immigrant Arizona law is a slap in the face of all Latinos. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed Bill SB1070 into law this past Friday April 23rd, moving the state further into inhuman legality; a racist police state. The Arizona law arms the police with the power to enforce immigration law, and to detain people solely because they ‘look’ undocumented, it also bans day laborers (jornaleros). In other words, it gives the police the power to use racial profiling against dark skin Latinos. Acting on stereotypes is called racial profiling. Whether racial profiling is legal or not, it is immoral. The persecution of an already vulnerable population who’s only crime is being victims of an unfair global capitalist system and of having been born on the wrong side of the United States’ imperial history, it is inhuman. For those who are skeptic about racial profiling, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva was forced to close down his office after receiving numerous threats accompanied by racist insults.
Shows of support for and opposition against the new Arizona law did not wait. The supporters have “the law” on their side, the opponents have their humanity and dignity. Although Obama has called the new law “misguided,” he is no friend of undocumented workers. The Obama administration has surpassed the Bush administration in deportations by more than 40% when we compared Bush last year to Obama’s first year as president. Deportations continue to rise. Unfortunately, many US citizens who do not have a clear view of history or of the workings of global capitalism, use the immigrants as scapegoats. They blame undocumented workers for the bad economy, the low wages, and the high rates of unemployment.
The supporters of anti-immigration laws ignore, or wish to ignore, the United State’s own role in the creation of undocumented immigrants. People often blame the corruption of Latin American government and their inability to meet the needs of their populations. However, the United States has a long history of creating and supporting this type of corruption and government oppression.
Although I don’t have enough space here to go over the long history of US military interventions and destructive economic policies, allowed me to mention a few. In 1954, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, because he wanted to confiscate unused land from a US company. Then in 1973, the CIA overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile and supported brutal dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. The United States then funded the Civil Wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Most recently, through the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States’ government and corporations have destroyed the livelihood of millions of farmers, who cannot compete with US subsidized crops. Corporations are free to cross borders looking for the most vulnerable and lowest paid workers, while workers themselves are forced to stay and accept meager wages.
If these examples are not enough for you, I invite you to learn Latin American history. The truth is, that the United States has greatly contributed to the political instability and inequality in Latin America. At the very least, the US owes Latin American workers the right to work without fear of persecution.
The terms we use in our discussion about migrant workers show our true colors. For example, there are those that label undocumented workers “illegal alien” or “criminal,” or in a Minuteman rally “wetbacks” or “beaners.” These terms reflect the labeler’s inability to see the humanity of others, as well as wounded or distorted humanity on the part of the labeler. I say “undocumented workers,” or “economic/environmental refugees” to mean human beings who are trying to have a better life despite a predatory capitalist system and inhumane laws.
This new anti-immigrant law forces us to rethink the concept of law and legality. Not all laws are moral or ethnical, and not all illegality is immoral or unethical. When we talk about ethnics we are talking about our understanding of right and wrong, not necessarily with the law and legality. Most people either rely on religion or on humanist ideals to think about right or wrong. Genocide against Native Americans, slavery, segregation, domestic violence, child labor, and countless other injustices were at a time legal, but we can agree today, never ethical or moral.
Even when there were those who used religion or scientific racism to justify these injustices, there were always also those who used religion or humanism to oppose oppression and affirm the right to life, liberty and happiness. Today, the exploitation and discrimination of immigrants falls under the same category.
Although we are supposed to have a separation of church and state (a secular government), I often hear politicians evoke God in their actions, especially conservatives. I always wonder why these same politicians don’t evoke religion when passing laws that are anti-Christian. But this is the opinion of a non-Christian, and maybe these self-described Christians do believe that Jesus Christ would have voted to approve this anti-immigrant law. Those who know better than me can have this debate. From a secular humanist perspective, I claim that all humans are equal, that the place of birth, just like skin color, is incidental, and therefore it should have nothing to do with how we treat this person.
Hopefully, one day in the future, discriminating against someone because of their place of birth will seem as unjust and irrational as slavery and child labor seem today. But in order for this to happen, people need to engage in some direct action. Just as Martin Luther King, Jr. went to jail to defy unjust laws, we might need to defy the law for justice and equality. This means unauthorized sit-ins, or providing safety to undocumented workers, blocking ICE from accessing a factory or a church. It also means putting pressure, just as Cesar Chavez showed us that when you hurt the pockets of the rich, they listen, we need to boycott the State of Arizona. We need to stop buying all products made of Arizona.
Eventually, this law might be found unconstitutional, either way, wee need to step our struggle against all forms of oppression and for human rights. A boycott helped bring down South Africa’s apartheid, it also helped Cesar Chavez gain better working conditions for farm workers, it will work for Arizona if we can create a national and international movement.