Local opinion: SB 1070 backers gone, but their racism is not

Russell Pearce is dead and Jan Brewer long ago departed the governor’s office.

But their racism, which Pearce and Brewer manifested in 2010 with Senate Bill 1070, the “show me your papers” law, lives on in Arizona’s latest crop of xenophobes.

Republican legislators this year voted to put the Secure the Border Act on the November ballot, although a court challenge could keep it from voters.

The act would make coming into Arizona from Mexico a state crime, allowing local police to arrest people, unless they cross at a port of entry. This is racist on the face of it, because who is trying to cross the Mexican border? People of color from Latin America and, lately, from all over the globe — Haiti, Africa, the Middle East, India, even China.

Why are they coming? Because the United States limits legal immigration for political reasons, and its self-serving global economic policies are pushing people deeper into poverty and hopelessness. Thus, they desperately move toward and across our borders.

Much like the millions of desperate white people who immigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1907, 1.25 million mostly poor, white Europeans came via Ellis Island, more than in any other year. Show me your papers? No, they just came, not needing passports, visas or other paperwork, according to the National Archives Research Services.

As an aside, the U.S. population in 1907 topped 87 million, a one-year increase of 1.56 million. Immigrants made up 80% of the increase, but there was no big outcry over a white “invasion.” When the country did enact limits, with quotas in the Immigration Act of 1924, the quotas favored white people. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, for example, remained in effect until 1943.

Besides being racist, Arizona’s current proposal would unconstitutionally usurp federal oversight of immigration. Arizona politicians are copying Texas, which passed such a law earlier this year; a judge has put it on hold. So our state copied a law cooked up by the racists and extremists in Texas politics.

If the feds are not enforcing the border to the liking of Texas and Arizona politicians, they should push for us to elect people to Congress who will demand better enforcement.

Wait. We did that, electing a Republican U.S. House majority in 2022. But congressional Republicans this year repeatedly rejected legislation to firm up the border. In fact, Republicans have for two decades stopped immigration reform and the stronger border controls that reform would have brought about.

So, they have themselves to blame. To cover their failures, they turn to racism via the Secure the Border Act. Racist Russell Pearce is spinning with glee in his grave.