Latinos, Illegal Immigrants, and Anti-Immigrants
The damning DOJ report on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s discriminatory policing practices illustrates the tight connection between rhetoric targeting illegal immigration and discriminatory attitudes and practices aimed at Latinos in general. On the level of impact, this connection is so obvious that it barely needs stating. For starters, a great many Latino citizens have family ties to people who currently are (or in the not-too-distant past, were) undocumented. When I recently spoke to a group of Ivy League Latino undergraduates, I asked students to raise their hands if they had family members who were or had at one time been undocumented. Almost every hand went up.
In addition, even apart from family ties, there is no clear way to distinguish between undocumented immigrants and the broader Latino community. And so policies that purport to be aimed at combatting undocumented immigration by using police and other local service providers as the first line of attack inevitably end up relying on the kinds of racial and linguistic profiling that the DOJ has found to be pervasive in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. This is one of the many reasons that Latinos of all political stripes — even those who have been vocal in their support of efforts to combat illegal immigration — are so unified in opposition to laws like those at work in Arizona and Alabama.
But there’s more going on here than disparate impact, and the DOJ report lays that bare as well. Bigots know that the lines between illegal immigrants, immigrants, and U.S. born Latinos is a blurry one. (See, for example, this NY Times story about US citizen Latinos detained, sometimes for as long as a year, on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants.) And so, by employing the supposedly race-neutral language of immigration law-enforcement, they feel empowered to act on their obvious animus towards Latinos of all legal statuses. For Arpaio and his department, reports of dark skinned people or of people speaking spanish were enough to merit police responses. And Latino drivers were almost 10 times more likely to be stopped by his department than non-Latinos. Many lawful US residents and citizens were then detained, often with no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
This important report should send shivers down the spine of politicians who think they can support people like Arpaio and still hope to win the votes of any significant number of US citizen Latinos. The DOJ’s findings will make it all the harder for them to hide behind the rhetoric of illegality in order to play both sides of the race card.
UPDATE: To be clear, by “politicians” playing both sides, I include Democrats and Republicans. While only the Republican party has made racially tinged rhetoric about illegal immigration a centerpiece of its current political identity, the sort of “collateral damage” described in the NY Times article is a predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s morally (and, from a policy standpoint) dubious decision to make deportation the centerpiece of its own immigration policy. The administration appears to be counting on Latino votes on the ground that Republican immigration rhetoric is so hateful that Latinos will look the other way about a deportation policy that separates families and leads US citizens to be detained for looking too foreign.
And yet the government that produced this report continues itself to persecute the undocumented community. They seem to expect that no one will notice the disconnect between their words and their actions.
Good news from DOJ.
I don’t totally disagree, David. The two sides are not completely equivalent though. There’s no evidence that racial animus is motivating the Obama administration’s deportation policy. More likely, it’s amoral political calculation.
As a retired CJ professional, I think the Sheriff represents what’s terrible in the sytem with policies that are not only backward but a bullying attitude toward all who disagree with him.
What’s perhaps sadder is that he continues to get support in Maricopa County.
It seems to me that until we see that the residents of the border states have some legitimate concerns, if not complaints, the immigration problem is not going to go away, no matter how awful that sheriff is.
First, breaking the law is rarely a minor matter, even when it is right to break the law. When there is a massive breaking of the law, something is very wrong (though just what has yet to be established clearly). Second, illegals get in front of those who stand in line waiting to become legals. This is patently unfair. So giving amnesty to illegals while others still wait in line doesn’t seem the right way to go. There must be another way.
A couple of other considerations: does anyone ever have a moral right to demand citizenship of a neighboring country? If so, when? A more particular consideration: if the Mexican powers-that-be are not being fair to the poor Mexicans, who should be responsible for correcting those injustices? The Church? The rich Mexicans, including especially the Legionaires of Christ? Americans in borders states? American bishops? You and me? etc. . .
While regarding these indocumentados, the Mexican government is a laughable disgrace, we Americans are far and away the most decent, friendly, and tolerant people on this earth. We treat immigrants from all lands better than any other nation on the planet. This is a wonderful part of our national character. Another great characteristic for which we are justifiably known is our sense of fair play.
Since the 1986 amnesty and until 2008, many Americans – not just big hotel chains and Argri-business outfits (the greedy capitalistas), but many average Americans – have basically given these illegal workers a wink and a nod, and have hired them to pick crops, slaughter beef, mow yards, clean and/or paint our houses, care for kids, etc.. Every American that did this knew very well at the time, that the person they were dealing with was technically illegal.
What were these Mexicans supposed to think? All of them arrive poor, and most with no more than what passes in Mexico as a fourth grade education. Most of them are however, quite trusting, hardworking, and decent (it goes without saying that most Mexicans are Roman Catholic). Obviously we wanted them here; we paid them well (compared to what they were used to), and we were friendly toward them. We Americans basically gave them the impression they were welcome and that ultimately whatever problems they had with their work status would in the future somehow be resolved. Meanwhile – we implied by our actions – if they just worked hard enough and long enough, they could trust that we (the Americans) would make things Ok. They counted on us.
Now, some twenty years on (for example) an indocumentado, after his having worked very hard, all the while trusting that we would somehow “make it right”, and after many of these guys have bought homes and land, and have kids growing up here and all the other things that come normally with living life, now we are considering simply rounding up all these folks and hauling them back to Juarez or whatever other Mexican hell-hole they came from, and telling them that “next time” they should follow the rules.
That is the NOT type of people we are; we are better than that. We are a Christian nation after all.
We are not they type of people who would be proud of ourselves for having snookered some of the poorest folks in the western hemisphere into working ten or twenty years at low pay with the implied possibility of a better life, only to toss them out like yesterday’s newspaper. Moreover, we owe it to ourselves not to become that sort of people.
As for fairness, immigration policy need not be “fair”. This is our house and we are entitled to let in whomever we like. I would not grant citizenship to the indocumentados; but would instead grant permanent-resident status i.e., the right to live and work here permanently, but without the right to vote.
We must try to balance justice with mercy. In this case justice demands a penalty and mercy calls for a certain type of broadmindedness and an effort to honestly consider everyone involved. The penalty (the justice) for the indocumentados then, would be that they could never vote or hold elective office. The mercy is they and their families can work and live here without fear of deportation, as long as they like.
Fair enough?