Arizona immigration law causes protests across the state
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May 10, 2010
Lindsay Huth
After years of begging the federal government to assist it in dealing with illegal immigration, Arizona finally took a stand on the issue.
The strict bill was signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, and protests have been erupting ever since. It will allow police to ask residents for their immigration papers if they have any suspicion they are in the state illegally.
Opponents of the bill claim that it will lead to racial profiling of Hispanics, and Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney of Los Angeles said that asking for the documents was like “Nazism.”
“Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said according to The New York Times. It expects the bill will bring “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is critical of the new immigration crackdown as well.
“I’m concerned about the whole idea of carrying papers and always having to be able to prove your citizenship,” McDonnell said in a radio broadcast, according to The Huffington Post. “That brings up some shades of some other regimes that weren’t necessarily helpful to democracy.”
Still, claims of racial profiling have been vehemently denied.
“This is not about race, it is about the law,” Ruthie Hendrycks, president and founder of Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform, told Fox News. “It comes down to enforcing our law. We are a nation of laws and it’s high time that officials at both federal and state levels start enforcing our laws and not reward those who are breaking the laws.”
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