Monday, May 17, 2010

 

About Arizona (Continued)

In my previous post I made some comments about the new anti-immigrant law in Arizona, especially that it doesn't address the problem that one of its supporters cited as the reason for her support. The law is an example of opportunistic politicians conflating two evils that are not logically related and enacting a law directed at one in the hope that the voters will think that the law addresses both. Thus, the worse of the two evils in Arizona is the drug smuggling. The law is specifically aimed at the lesser evil, which is the presence of illegal immigrants from Mexico and points south. Supporters of the law include those Arizonans who are terrified by the armed and dangerous smugglers as well as those who resent what they view as an intrusion of dark-skinned Spanish-speaking invaders into a region populated by light-skinned English-speaking natives.

I didn't finish my previous post. The question is, what is to be done? My answer, nothing. There is nothing that I or any other person outside of Arizona can do to change the mind-set of those Arizonans who support the law. They will have to see for themselves what effect the law will have and decide for themselves what to do about it. Right now anything that we outsiders do, such as organizing boycotts and public protests, will only make the Arizonans more stubbornly determined to enforce the law and prove to us that it works. Only when they see that it doesn't work the way they want it to work will they change their minds and change the law.

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