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June 17, 2010

Arizona - pick on someone your own size

No one likes a bully. Bullies pick on the weakest, and the proper response to a bully is: Pick on someone your own size! However, legislation pending in the Arizona Legislature is taking a nasty form: bullying children with the threatened stripping of U.S. citizenship, even if the children were born on U.S. soil.

To Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, SB1070 (the "show your papers" bill) wasn't enough to make his fears of undocumented immigrants abate, so now he is going after "anchor babies." If passed, "anchor babies" would not be issued Arizona state birth certificates, even if born on U.S. soil, a result at odds with long-standing U.S. Supreme Court cases and federal immigration law.

When is enough too much?

First, there is the "ratchet" problem - how do you know when you've tightened the screws enough? If "showing your papers" isn't enough, if stripping U.S. citizenship from the children of immigrants born on U.S. soil isn't enough, what is? Placing land mines on the border? For a 100-foot perimeter? A mile? How about poisoned water set out to entice those making a grueling desert crossing? Border sniper towers, 24/7? Xenophobic entrepreneurs selling "immigrant hunting" licenses? When is enough too much?

Second is the "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" problem. This is harder for anti-immigrant folks to grasp, because to them, undocumented immigrants are parasites eating away at Arizona's vitals and giving nothing back - they are a problem and the answer is exclusion. Exclude them by any means necessary - don't allow them to drive, find work, live, speak their mother language, form families or attend school.

However, the truth is that the undocumented pay more into the system in taxes than they cost. Immigrant communities are models of entrepreneurialism - this has happened repeatedly in U.S. history. While not a model of an enlightened attitude toward undocumented immigrants, Texas politicians have courted the economic and political support of Latino communities. On the other hand, former Gov. Pete Wilson lost California for Republicans for a generation because he embraced the ultimately illegal Proposition 187, which would have denied state health care, education and welfare benefits to undocumented immigrants.

The third problem is the "family values" problem. On Pearce's Web site, he trumpets his unabashed embrace of "family values." Fair enough, but in the context of proposed legislation withdrawing birthright citizenship, what do "family values" mean? Surprise Immigration and Customs Enforcement workplace raids, detention and deportation; exclusion of the children of undocumented immigrants from schools, and medical care that hurts communities composed of citizens and undocumented immigrants don't embody "family values." Are "family values" really served by sending undocumented immigrants into legal oblivion?

Finally, what about the "800-pound gorilla" - the U.S. Constitution? There is more than a century of settled Supreme Court cases and federal immigration law establishing birthright citizenship. Even if Pearce and the Arizona Legislature might like to straitjacket the gorilla, this "800-pound gorilla" may not go that gently into the night.

So Arizona, I have a question for you: Have you no decency?

Originally printed in the San Francisco Chronicle