Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Jim Burroway on Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law: We Are All Mexicans




Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has a very fine series of articles (here and here) about Arizona's new anti-immigrant law, entitled "We Are All Mexicans."  As he notes, 




This is also the same state that banned same-sex marriage and rescinded domestic partnership benefits among state government employees. First they went for the gays, then the brown-skinned…



Once again: what we're seeing with the current wave of legislation and ballot initiatives targeting immigrants is a naked, ugly, and exceptionally immoral attempt of right-leaning groups to use fear and hate of the other to drive voters to the polls in the coming elections.  As long as gay-bashing worked, gay citizens got the brunt of this political activity.

Now it's people of color and immigrants.  And this wave of hatred has not yet crested in American society.  Watch for the immigrant bashing to increase dramatically as the elections near, as the political groups employing the politics of fear and division try a good cop, bad cop tactic in which their leaders denounce the extremism they've worked very hard to elicit among voters ripe for hate.