Revolution #274, July 8, 2012
Fascist Anti-Immigrant Law Upheld
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Arizona’s anti-immigration law Senate Bill 1070, unanimously upholding the reactionary centerpiece of the law, “the one critics have called its ‘show me your papers’ provision” (New York Times, June 25, 2012, “Blocking Parts of Arizona Law, Justices Allow Its Centerpiece”). The Court also ruled by a 5-3 vote that the remainder of the law was unconstitutional because its provisions gave a state (Arizona) the authority to interfere with federal immigration policy and enforcement. But to be clear, the essence of this ruling or this law is a huge attack on the masses of Latino immigrants in Arizona, the masses of Latino people, and ultimately the people as a whole—with implications for the whole country, and it is a further continuation of the repression and oppression that sets the terms and conditions for the lives of immigrants in this country.
In Revolution #208 we wrote:
This law is an ugly, radically reactionary leap beyond the already intolerable conditions immigrants without papers face in this country. This law demonizes and outlaws people who are from Mexico or Latin America, or look like they may be from Mexico or Latin America, or indeed from any other country from which immigrants come. The law requires that police demand proof of legal residency from anyone they “stop, detain or arrest” if police suspect that person is an undocumented immigrant. Many legal residents as well as citizens are going to be subjected to interrogation by the police because they “fit the description”—that is, if you are dark-skinned; have an accent; wear a certain style of clothes; or live in the “immigrant” part of town.
This is what the Supreme Court has upheld and laid the basis to set into motion on a mass scale.
In the coming weeks, Revolution will be writing about this Supreme Court decision and speaking to its implications for the movement we are building for revolution.
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