Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Not in my state: Anti-immigration law doesn't reflect the beliefs of Arizona's people

Ha Ha, .....fooled ya'!

This is by the "Immigrants Rights" advocate, Phil Gordon, currently sitting as Mayor of Phoenix,....the former "Sanctuary City".

Jeez I hope Arpaio will take a run at this jerk!

Don't vomit on yer keyboards, reading this garbage.

GTC


Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042304469.html

Not in my state: Anti-immigration law doesn't reflect the beliefs of Arizona's people


PHOENIX

As an immigration bill that nationally embarrasses Arizona becomes bad law, our best hope in my hometown is that the rest of America doesn't do to Arizona what Senate Bill 1070 requires our police officers to do to people with brown skin: "profile" them based on stereotypes and insufficient information.

Arizona is not a state seething with hatred, eager to trample the civil rights of residents in haphazard pursuit of illegal immigrants. Nor are most Arizonans bigots eager to drag our state back to the 1980s, when Gov. Evan Mecham's absurd behavior made our home a national laughingstock.

Our state is frustrated. We have become ground zero in the battle over illegal immigration because of years of lapsed federal border security. This week that frustration exploded, thanks to hateful political opportunists such as state Sen. Russell Pearce, the author of the legislation, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is already under investigation by the federal Justice Department for alleged violations of civil rights.

Pearce and Arpaio -- two men who are to Arizona law enforcement what George Wallace was to Alabama government -- care less about capturing human smugglers and drug cartel gunmen than they do about capturing headlines. And in a state with a far-right legislature that is increasingly out of step with an increasingly moderate population, they're also out of step with the rules of basic civility.

Anyone who points out that S.B. 1070 is surely unconstitutional is viciously attacked. One of Pearce's many broadsides even maliciously attacked the Catholic Church. Those unimpressed by the after-the-fact training for law enforcement proposed Friday by Gov. Jan Brewer are brushed aside. Those who raise a concern about the legislation (perhaps noting that its "reasonable suspicion" standard for police stops of those who look illegal is overly broad) have been met not with facts but with slurs against their character, patriotism and respect for the Constitution.
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We in Arizona do respect the Constitution, just as we respect the hard work and sacrifices of the many immigrants who have contributed to making our state a diverse, welcoming place. That respect has driven a series of massive, passionate counterprotests to this legislation, and it will continue to drive opposition from the center, the left and the moderate right. The opponents of S.B. 1070 are many in Arizona, a majority who can no longer be silent if the price of silence is allowing the vocal, spiteful few to rule: All of us, from business leaders to police chiefs, elected representatives to church groups, will continue to pressure Gov. Brewer. As we see it, the governor must call a special session of our legislature to fix the act's myriad flaws.

Until she does, we will explore every option available to quell the fear and frustration that have become rampant here. Already, I have called a special meeting of the Phoenix City Council to establish standing to sue the state on the grounds that S.B. 1070 unconstitutionally co-opts our police force to enforce immigration laws that are the rightful jurisdiction of the federal government.

The opponents of S.B. 1070 will continue to work with Washington to permanently secure the Arizona border, where last year 500,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended. Our aim is nothing short of comprehensive immigration reform, a new policy that cracks down on predators and criminals who have entered the United States illegally even as it establishes a path to legal residency for law-abiding immigrant neighbors who want nothing more than the chance to earn a paycheck and live a productive life.

The Arizona I've known since moving here from Chicago as a boy is the birthplace of C?sar Ch?vez; it's a free-thinking, hospitable state capable of balancing great natural beauty and cultures of all sorts. This place we've heard about lately, the Arizona willing to risk economic boycotts and international ridicule in the pursuit of an ugly, discriminatory law? I don't recognize it.

But I do recognize those responsible for this humiliating moment. They are bitter, small-minded and full of hate, and they in no way speak for Arizona.

The writer, a Democrat, has been mayor of Phoenix since 2004.

So the guy is from Chicago ?

'Splains a lot .

Does that dipschit even realize Cesar Chavez was against Illegal Immigration too.............what a dumbass! He was an out spoken critic of border jumpers, he said it took jobs from that folks that tried to do it right!

Will the mayor be reelected?

The UFW during Ch�vez's tenure was committed to restricting immigration. C�sar Ch�vez and Dolores Huerta fought the Bracero Program that existed from 1942 to 1964. Their opposition stemmed from their belief that the program undermined US workers and exploited the migrant workers. Their efforts contributed to Congress ending the Bracero Program in 1964. In 1973, the UFW was one of the first labor unions to oppose proposed employer sanctions that would have prohibited hiring undocumented immigrants. Later during the 1980s, while Ch�vez was still working alongside UFW president, Dolores Huerta, the cofounder of the UFW, was key in getting the amnesty provisions into the 1986 federal immigration act.[9]

On a few occasions, concerns that undocumented migrant labor would undermine UFW strike campaigns led to a number of controversial events, which the UFW describes as anti-strikebreaking events, but which have also been interpreted as being anti-immigrant. In 1969, Ch�vez and members of the UFW marched through the Imperial and Coachella Valleys to the border of Mexico to protest growers' use of undocumented immigrants as strikebreakers. Joining him on the march were both Reverend Ralph Abernathy and US Senator Walter Mondale.[10] In its early years, Ch�vez and the UFW went so far as to report undocumented immigrants who served as strikebreaking replacement workers, as well as those who refused to unionize, to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.[11][12][13][14][15]

In 1973, the United Farm Workers set up a "wet line" along the United States-Mexico border to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the United States illegally and potentially undermining the UFW's unionization efforts.[16] During one such event in which Ch�vez was not involved, some UFW members, under the guidance of Ch�vez's cousin Manuel, physically attacked the strikebreakers, after attempts to peacefully persuade them not to cross the border failed.

Cesar Chavez: Longtime foe of illegal immigration
By Bryan Fischer

This week has been Cesar Chavez week at Boise State University, as our local campus celebrates the legacy of one of the three men to have his birthday celebrated as an official holiday in California (the other two: Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King, Jr.). Chavez, who died in 1993, is being portrayed as a champion of illegal immigration when the truth in fact is a bit different.

According to a 2006 article in The American Conservative by Steve Sailer, although Chavez's union, the United Farm Workers, did manage to raise wages significantly for stoop laborers from 1965 to 1981, those gains have largely disappeared for one reason: illegal immigration.

Chavez himself was a third generation American citizen and a Navy veteran. Although he has become over time virtually the patron saint of the Reconquista movement to reclaim all of the southwest for Mexico, in his prime he was an ardent opponent of illegal immigration and actively fought against the importation of strikebreakers from Mexico.

Chavez understood the basic laws of supply and demand � the greater the supply (of labor), the less the demand (and hence the lower the wages). Just as the founder of the American Federation of Labor Samuel Gompers was an influential voice calling for the immigration-restricting law of 1924, so Chavez openly and actively opposed illegal immigration because it crippled his ability to unionize farm workers and increase their wages.

In 1979 testimony to Congress, Chavez complained, "... when the farm workers strike and their strike is successful, the employers go to Mexico and have unlimited, unrestricted use of illegal alien strikebreakers to break the strike. And, for over 30 years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has looked the other way and assisted in the strikebreaking. I do not remember one single instance in 30 years where the Immigration service has removed strikebreakers. ... The employers use professional smugglers to recruit and transport human contraband across the Mexican border for the specific act of strikebreaking..."

In 1969, Chavez actually led a march to the Mexican border to protest illegal immigration, accompanied by Sen. Walter Mondale and Ralph Abernathy, whom alert readers will recognize as Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Leadership Conference.

Chavez demanded that the federal government close the border, routinely reported suspected illegal immigrants to immigration officials, and put his brother in charge of Minutemen-like border patrols which on more than one occasion resulted in the beatings of intruders.

The collapse of the Mexican economy in 1982 sent a flood of illegal immigrants north of the border, driving down wages, and making border enforcement politically problematic. As one economist noted, "We have essentially privatized the immigration policy of this country, and left it in the hands of California's growers."

While cheap labor does reduce the cost of, say, strawberries, it does so only minimally. This economist noted that perhaps 7 percent of the price paid by shoppers for strawberries actually goes to pickers. Meanwhile, citizen taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab for workers' medical care and social services and their children's schooling. The National Academy of Sciences estimated in 1997 that an immigrant without a high-school degree ultimately costs America $100,000 more than he contributes.

As the UFW declined into irrelevance in the 1980s, Chavez began to back mass immigration as a way of maintaining political visibility.

Yet the Latin-American electorate remains ambivalent about illegal immigration. According to a 2002 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, 48 percent of registered Latino voters felt that there were "too many" immigrants in the U.S. while only 7 percent thought there were "too few."

This makes sense, of course, since the nation's Hispanics often suffer the consequences of illegal immigration most directly in terms of lower wages, dysfunctional schools, and pressure from relatives to assist them in sneaking into the U.S.

Illegal immigration is a benefit to Mexico in ways other than money sent home by workers in the U.S., the second largest source of income in the Mexican economy behind oil. As a former Mexican Foreign Minister admitted, an insecure border allows Mexico's most white ruling class to, in Sailer's words, "bleed off" the discontented poor rather than make the kind of fundamental reforms necessary to make the Mexican economy vibrant and healthy.

� Bryan Fischer

I think Joe Arpaio can whip his sorry snivelling Liberal Socialist AZZ right into the Mud, myself.

BUT,....we are again back into the area of "The ACORN voting Dynamic"

Hoods on the street corners around polling places come in all flavors and colors, if'n you follow my drift.

GTC

Les, can you get me a date on that Bryan Fischer article,....?

GTC

Mar 22, 2007, got it from here http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/070322