The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

For those of you who have any doubts about the racial profiling involved or who think that having "papers" on one as a U.S. citizen will excuse Latinos/Latinas from any harassment, please think again. This recent case of a Puerto Rican who was threatened with deportation to Mexico, despite being a U.S. citizen by birth says it all. The U.S. citizen was kept in jail for three days while the government determined his status, despite having his "papers" http://bit.ly/9K0VTF. Given this can you seriously say that we have nothing to fear from the recent AZ legislation?
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

The fact that the immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed at the federal level does not mean that an unjust law is acceptable.

#1- The immigration system is broken. It needs to be fixed at the federal level. We need to hold our politicians accountable until they fix it.

#2- The Arizona law is unjust and as such it is unacceptable.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

Voyager48, You are misrepresenting what I have written. I do think that people from all over the world are deserving of consideration.

This article is about the Arizona law which is intended to racially profile against people who are Latino.

Moreover, tragically, the hate crimes against Latinos have not been about martyrdom but rather murders that have resulted from prejudice and fear-mongering.

I agree that the immigration system is broken and that it needs to be reformed immediately. I agree that the federal government has looked the other way and that we need to hold our politicians accountable for this.

This article, however, is about the unjust law in Arizona.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

Petey131, You write "I am Mexican-American. I was born in the USA. I am proud and will not let fear dominate me." I agree with your sentiments. The fact that the emotion of fear comes up for me given the racial profiling that this law engenders and the fact that bigotry and racism still occur in this country will not in anyway dominate me. In this article I am simply writing about what's so. As a proud U.S. born citizen and daughter of immigrants who came to this country in search of the American dream, I will not let fear dominate me either. That it is exists in me as an emotion - that is undeniable. Acknowledging that I now get to choose what I will do with it. And what I will do with it is choose to believe in the words of Ambrose Redmoon, "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear," and the words of Margaret Mead, "...that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." It is out of those emotions that I have written this piece and chosen to share my story and that of my parents with the world.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

Romulus, I responded to your question yesterday, but will respond again today. Those are two different things. In the first place, if a law is unjust, unfair and even unconstitutional, it must be condemned, i.e., when the abolitionists condemned slavery they did so on this basis -- so too did those that condemned the Japanese Internment camps during World War II, the trail of tears, Jim Crow and the Chinese Exclusion Act. There is a long history of folks condemning unjust laws in this great nation. That argument is separate from the argument of coming up with solutions. The purpose of this blog post was to condemn this unjust law. I am working on another blog post which will speak to my specific recommendations as it relates to immigration reform. However, once again that is a different topic for a different post.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

#1- No human being is illegal. #2- We are not talking about aliens here because last time I checked Hispanics were human beings and not from another planet. #3- If you want to know where to look for Hispanics, you will have to look among the white, black and Asian populations because Hispanic is not a race. If you are looking for Hispanics some of us are brown, some are black, some are white, some are Asian. Due to the history of colonization in the Americas we are mixed and to not realize that is of great folly.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Responding to Arizona's Immigration Law

Mr. Alexander, one of my concerns in this piece is civil rights. Specifically, as a U.S. citizen I am concerned about my own civil rights and the civil rights of other Hispanics like me who will be profiled under this bill. I am not talking about the Middle East in this post. I am talking about the United States of America and my concern about my civil rights in the U.S.A. as a U.S. citizen. If you read the entry for civil rights under the Merriam-Webster online dictionary you will see exactly what I am talking about.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civil+rights

Main Entry: civil rights
Function: noun plural
Date: 1658

: the nonpolitical rights of a citizen; especially : the rights of personal liberty guaranteed to United States citizens by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and by acts of Congress
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