¡Alto Arizona!

Arizona, Arpaio and SB1070 Spur Crusade for Immigrant Rights

By CARLOS GARCIA, Puente Arizona | Source: Politic365.com | July 20, 2012

The migrant rights movement in this country is about to enter a new phase and every person, no matter their position, will have to decide how they will relate to it.

While many are waiting to see the decision of the Supreme Court related to the Department of Justice’s SB1070 case, a human rights crisis of epic proportions is already roiling in Arizona.

The status quo we face now and the results of even the best possible decision from the Supreme Court still represent a steady march toward anti-immigrant attrition that the state has constructed over years.  First we faced efforts to restrict our ability to function in society: drivers’ license bans, denial of social services, and English only rules. Then they built ways to humiliate and dehumanize us through Sheriff Arpaio’s outdoor jails and Florence’s expanding penal colonies.

From 2007 to 2010, even before SB1070 was introduced, our community faced checkpoints, bore witness to women forced to give birth in shackles, and traveled to work and school on a daily basis already wondering if we would reunite with our families and loved ones at the end of each day.  In 2010, Arizona sought to erase us from history with a ban on ethnic studies and remove us altogether through SB1070.

Pearce fundraiser booted from 2 Mexican restaurants

By Jim Small | Source: AZCapitolTimes.com | Published: June 14, 2012

Former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of Arizona's controversial immigration law S.B. 1070, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington April 24. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Former Senate President Russell Pearce is scrambling to find a location for a fundraiser scheduled for this afternoon, as two different Phoenix Mexican restaurants told him today that he is not welcome.

The fundraiser was originally scheduled to be held at Macayo’s Restaurant near Central Avenue and Indian School Road in uptown Phoenix. However, DeeDee Garcia Blase, a critic of Pearce and the co-president of the Tequila Party, organized a protest of the restaurant this afternoon during the event.

She said that the planned protest and her calls to Macayo’s corporate offices led the restaurant to cancel the event. Messages left with Macayo’s were not immediately returned.

Late this morning, Pearce’s campaign sent an email to supporters informing them that the fundraiser would instead be held at Oaxaca Restaurante y Cantina in downtown Phoenix. The email did not say why the location was changed.

Within hours, Oaxaca also cancelled Pearce’s event. Joseph Aguayo, the restaurant’s manager, told Arizona Capitol Times he did so after Garcia Blase contacted him and told him the event, which was registered under a different name, was actually to help Pearce raise money in his bid to return to the Senate after being recalled last year.

Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona

By Gary Younge | February 8, 2012  |  This article appeared in the February 27, 2012 edition of The Nation.

In 1997 black America gained a new hero when Tiger Woods putted himself into history at the US Masters. Within a few weeks, it had lost him in an unlikely fashion—to a bespoke racial identity articulated on Oprah’s couch.

Does it bother you being termed “African-American”? Oprah asked him.

“It does,” said Woods, whose father was of African-American, Chinese and Native American descent and whose mother was of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent. At school he would tick “African-American” and “Asian.” “Growing up, I came up with this name: I’m Cablinasian [CAucasian, BLack, INdian and ASIAN]. I’m just who I am…whoever you see in front of you.” According to an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times, Woods could not have been more praiseworthy if he’d scored a hole in one wearing a blindfold. “He justly rejects attempts to pigeonhole him in the past,” claimed the editorial. “Tiger Woods is the embodiment of our melting pot and our cultural diversity ideals and deserves to be called what he in fact is—an American.”

It is a peculiar fact of modern Western rhetoric, as prevalent among liberals as conservatives, that nationality is understood as a liberating identity, whereas ethnicity, race and other markers are regarded as confining. There are far more black and Asian people in the world than there are Americans. Racial identity is no less diverse than national identity. But somehow to describe Woods as black or Asian traps him in a pigeonhole, while to define him by his nationality sets him free.

America's immigration history is race-based and complex (Insight)

By Robert A. Ratliff Special to the Press-Register | Published: Sunday, June 10, 2012 | Source: Blog.Al.com

Elvin Pabalo waves an American flag with opponents of Alabama's new immigration law as they get ready to march down Jefferson Street on their way to the Limestone County Courthouse to protest the law in Athens, Ala. Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. (The Huntsville Times/RobinConn)

Whenever I meet people and they learn that I am an immigration attorney, they always ask me this question: “Why don’t they just come legally like our ancestors did?”

The “they” in that question is often undefined. Do the questioners mean the babies and young children brought here by their parents and who know no other way of life?

Do they mean the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans who arrived here on temporary work visas and just stayed?

Or do they mean the men and women fleeing Haiti who for political reasons do not receive the same benefits as Cubans who come to this country?

Regardless of who “they” are, the question reflects two basic misunderstandings about our immigration law and the history of our country.

• First, what is the legal process today?

Our immigration law is a complex set of rules and regulations. We invite for immigration primarily two groups of people: those who are sponsored by an employer, and those with immediate family already legally present in the country.

Work-related visas are generally reserved to those with a high level of education or other skill. For unskilled workers, the wait can be years.

Family categories can be worse. The current wait for the brother or sister of a United States citizen from the Philippines is 23 years. The unmarried son or daughter of a legal permanent resident from Mexico must wait 20 years.