The Arizona governor took her state back to disturbing times when having to show your citizenship papers was required. It parallels what happened in Europe leading up to World War II, when Hitler's forces routinely stopped people for their identity papers and arrested Jews, gays, gypsies and other "undesirables." We all know how that turned out.
Our federal government has its own shameful past dealing with immigrants and citizens. In California and other west coast states, approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans (nationalized and U.S. born citizens among them) were interned during World War II and moved to "War Relocation Camps" after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It wasn't until 1988 that the U.S. government apologized.
Our country's history is marked by episodes of anti-immigrant sentiment. We saw it a few years ago when former President George W. Bush tried to take on immigration reform and was roundly criticized, especially by members of his Republican Party and the so-called minutemen. Anti-immigrant protesters demonstrated in droves. Last week, a similar scene played out in Arizona in response to Governor Jan Brewer signing the toughest immigration law in the country. Senate Bill 1070, also known as the "papers, please" law and slated to go into effect in 90 days, would make failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give police broad powers to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. There have been reports out of Arizona that authorities will know exactly who to look for: Latinos suspected of entering the United States through Mexico. You can bet that authorities will target Hispanics, and that makes it racial profiling, plain and simple.
We in the LGBT community know all too well what it means to be a target of discrimination, to be sought out because we "look different." That's a big part of why we need the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, so that LGBT employees can't be fired simply for looking different, for not conforming to traditional gender roles. Decades ago, police in San Francisco routinely raided gay bars and harassed and arrested gay people and those suspected of being gay.
If you're LGBT and an immigrant in Arizona, the new Arizona law is doubly alarming. The law threatens to tear couples apart and separate children from their parents. According to Immigration Equality, 40 percent of LGBT binational same-sex couples in the United States include a Latino family member. "For them and their loved ones, Arizona is now the most dangerous place in America," the agency stated in a news release condemning the "papers, please" law.
For those in our community who don't think protesting the new law is important, think again. Being gay and an immigrant are not mutually exclusive. We saw the community rally around a Bay Area couple last year who were under threat of deportation. They received a reprieve thanks to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California.) People in Arizona who are caught up under this unjust law will get no such reprieve. For one thing, the state's two senators are both Republican and one of them, John McCain, is on record supporting the spirit of the new law. McCain tried hard to reform immigration law last time around, so it's a shame that because he's facing a primary election challenge from the right, he has to betray what little credibility he has on this issue.
Tobias Wolff, an openly gay law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, has read through the text of the law and is alarmed, he said in an open letter this week. He said that he has studied U.S. laws and worked on civil rights issues for 15 years and has never seen a "more appalling and dehumanizing statute in present-day America than this measure."
The law declares an entire class of human beings to be inherently criminal because they are trespassers on all public and private lands in Arizona due to their status, he writes. The statute requires that police and other law enforcement agents in Arizona treat an entire population as presumptively criminal on the basis of their race and appearance. And it effectively requires lawful immigrants to carry papers wherever they go in order to avoid arrest and detention, "as if we were living in apartheid-era South Africa or half-slave/half-free pre-Civil War America," he said.
Wolff points out the real purpose of the "papers, please" law: to disempower all brown-skinned immigrants in Arizona, turning them into a third-class group who must live in constant fear of government and are subject to arbitrary abuse and exploitation.
Voters in California tried a similar tact when they passed Proposition 187 in 1994. The initiative denied social benefits to illegal immigrants. Three years later, a federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional. But the damage was already done: undocumented workers largely continue to live in fear and often will not go to the police when they are victims of crime or have witnessed one – even in sanctuary cities such as San Francisco.
Imagine having to carry around your passport or birth certificate all the time in case you are asked for your status by a law enforcement officer. We don't think too many people would like that to be a part of their daily lives.
Legal challenges to the Arizona law are already being discussed. Until those challenges are successful, we must stand in solidarity with our Hispanic neighbors to the south. The law is unjust, and as a community that has had its share of discrimination, we cannot stand silently to the side as another group of people is targeted. We must take a united stand against discrimination and speak up for each other, especially when it happens to our neighbors.