By Patricia H. Kushlis
Since Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer (R) signed what amounts to a reprise of the Alien and Sedition Act for anyone stepping foot in that fair State – or should I say, mostly hot, dusty and dry State – the question I’ve been asked the most over the past two weeks since I’ve been in Washington, DC is whether New Mexico will be next. I dutifully assure my interlocutors that although New Mexico and Arizona are neighbors and both share a southern border with Mexico the answer is an unequivocal No.
The two states are not peas-in-a-pod. They’re also not seeds-in-a-jalapeno. Although New Mexico has its gun-toting white male and occasionally female mostly aging vigilantes plus some just plain conservative Tea Baggers there are far fewer of them than in Arizona. In fact, New Mexico has a far more ethnically and racially mixed population than does its westerly neighbor. Besides our Democratic Governor Bill Richardson – part Hispanic himself – does not need to kowtow to right wing whims.
Nor, for that matter does Diane Denish, New Mexico’s Anglo Lieutenant Governor, who is running for Bill’s seat in November. She’s not a shoe-in, but her electoral chances are excellent. She’s running unopposed in the Democratic primary, has a powerful campaign organization, an excellent reputation and lots of money behind her. Meanwhile the Republicans are badly fractured.
New Mexico’s political stars are agin it
As far as Arizona’s brand of justice is concerned, Denish came out last week in an e-mail to the party faithful, the media and anyone else who cared to read what she had to say, to go on record as appalled by Arizona’s new law. Don’t expect New Mexico’s out of session legislature to follow Arizona’s suit either – the New Mexico Legislature is run by Democrats many of whom themselves are Hispanics.
Furthermore, New Mexico simply has not and does not attract the number of illegal workers that Arizona does. The construction industry is down everywhere including New Mexico but the Land of Enchantment never caught California’s housing boom infection that Arizona did. That contagious overdrive just barely touched the banks of the Rio Grande before the bust began.
New Mexico, therefore, never became the mammoth draw for cheap unskilled labor from south of the border. That’s why if you look at the Washington Post’s map on Friday, April 30, 2010 that depicts the percentage of unauthorized immigrants in 2008 as a percentage of state populations, New Mexico’s percentage is only between 3.5 and 5.4 whereas Arizona’s is 7.9%, California’s is 7.3% and Texas 6.0%. Only Nevada at 8.8% is higher.
Please, get real
Putting aside the legality and human rights questions, there are also those of practicality, enforceability and need. Not only is Arizona’s a poorly written law – racial profiling is not supposed to be a factor – but, if not, then what guidelines do the police have for stopping every Tom, Dick Harry and Juan standing on the street corner? I think that, in the end, just like the 1930s prohibition fiasco, this law will simply prove unenforceable.
Meanwhile, the police have enough to do without having to attempt to enforce a bizarre law that will trigger suits and counter-suits by the million. And then, where will they put the people they have arrested for standing under a lamp post? Please, there are enough problematic laws on the books already. Can’t we save the law enforcement officials, the courts and jail space for fighting crime?
Where’s the beef?
In an Op Ed also on April 30 in the Post, Edward Schumacher-Matos argues that the numbers of illegal immigrants, according to Homeland Security, has dropped and continues to drop annually.
For Arizona alone, that number declined from a high of 550,000 to 460,000 last year and continues to diminish.
There are far more Border Patrol (20,000) patrolling today than in times past complete with high tech gadgetry and hundreds of miles of barriers. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that the year ending March 2009, the lowest number of Mexicans (175,000) entered the US since 1970 down from a high of 650,000 in 2005. The Border Patrol reports that apprehensions – a rough measure of illegal immigrant traffic –were down nearly 70% last year from 2000. Shumacher-Matos has marshaled far more statistics to support his case: this article is well worth reading simply because of the compelling data he cites.
Now I realize that statistics won’t register with folk spooked by an activist right-wing fear and smear campaign aggravated by certain predictable parts of the media. But for those who like to bolster arguments with facts – not fear – there have been plenty of the latter but too few of the former. So thank you Mr. Schumacher-Matos for bringing some facts to light.
Meanwhile, while the dust settles, I’ll stick to the New Mexican approach.