On Friday, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law, making it a crime for illegal immigrants to be in Arizona.
The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act requires state officials to comply with and assist in the enforcement of federal immigration laws by requiring anyone who arouses suspicion to produce “an alien registration document.”
Furthermore, the act establishes the following as criminal activity: trespassing by illegal immigrants; stopping to hire workers or soliciting work under specified circumstances; and transporting, harboring or concealing illegal immigrants.
According to Brewer, the bill represents what is best for Arizona, helping to curb border related violence and crime due to illegal immigration.
“We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels.” Brewer said in a statement prior to signing the bill. “We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings and violence compromise our quality of life. We cannot delay while the destruction happening south of our international border creeps its way north.”
While the bill has garnered over 70 percent support among Arizona voters, according to a Rasmussen poll, Brewer and SB 1070 aroused strong opposition even before the signing, when 1,500 protesters gathered at the state capitol.
At UCLA, the campus organization Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success led dozens of people in a march to the federal building in Westwood to hold a vigil immediately following Brewer’s signing of the bill.
On Saturday, the group continued to advocate against the bill by marching to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office to protest, and on Friday IDEAS will be holding a rally at Meyerhoff Park.
“This is an issue that affects all communities, of all backgrounds, of all ethnicities,” said Sophia Campos, a third-year global studies and political science student and member of IDEAS. “I would hope that we can all come together at this point and take a look at the history of our country and immigration reform. This is a time when people need to come together and take a stand against racism and hatred.”
Established in 2003, IDEAS promotes the rights of undocumented students through a system of fundraising, garnering community support and legislative advocacy. Through California’s AB 540 law, the organization has given 64 scholarships, ranging from $500 to $3500, to undocumented students who qualify to pay in-state tuition.
The organization also promotes the passage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would consider the “special equities and circumstances” of undocumented students who were brought to the country as children.
For IDEAS member Eder Gaona, a fourth-year political science and Chicano studies student, the Arizona bill is highly reminiscent of California’s Proposition 187, which prohibited undocumented immigrants from attaining certain services such as secondary education.
Parallels to Proposition 187 were also drawn by Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano studies who saw the bill as counterproductive to public safety and to the economy of Arizona.
According to Hinojosa-Ojeda, the bill will lead to illegal immigrants becoming more hesitant to report crimes or attend to medical needs.
Police resources will also be spread too thin to meet the everyday needs of Arizona citizens, Hinojosa-Ojeda said.
Furthermore, referring to the Raising the Floor Study by the Center for American Progress, Hinojosa-Ojeda said $1.5 trillion annually would be earned from making legal reforms to immigration policy, while $2.6 trillion would be lost from the restrictions against illegal immigrants.
“I am deeply troubled by this misguided policy,” said Democrat Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and representative of California’s 30th District, which includes Westwood. “It undermines basic civil rights, could encourage racial profiling by law enforcement, and instills a fear among immigrants, pushing them further into the shadows.”
This fear, he noted, emerges from the fact that at any moment immigrants could be asked for “their papers.”
Waxman added that while this sets a dangerous precedent for other states, he is pleased with the decisions of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state assembly members who have spoken out against immigration reform at the state level.
While the governor thinks comprehensive reform should take shape in the form of secure borders and forward-looking labor policies, he sees immigration as a primarily federal responsibility that should be dealt with at such a level, said Schwarzenegger spokesman Francisco Castillo.
For Brewer though, this is a responsibility that has not yet been fulfilled.
“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” Brewer said in a statement. “But decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”