I’m a foreigner here, and I look like one. Easy to pick out in a crowd. I’ve been here a few years, completely legally. But at any moment a cop could stop me and demand to see my papers. They don’t, usually, and most of the time I don’t carry them with me. I’d worry about losing them if I carried them with me all the time. I could make photocopies, I guess, but would a photocopy convince a cop?
Still, from time to time the word goes round that people are being stopped and asked for their papers, and then I do carry them, until things relax again. . . .
The government could decide to deport me at any moment, of course. That fact has a definite effect on what I do. I’d like to stay permanently, but it seems unlikely they would let me stay, once I stop working. So I haven’t bought a house here. Most of my money goes out of the country. I don’t have a lot of possessions here; better to stay light, in case I have to leave.
This new law in Arizona doesn’t really bother me much. It sounds like situation normal for me. Anyway, I’m not in Arizona. I’m not even Hispanic. I’m a white guy, actually. I live and work in China.
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Don’t get me wrong: I understand the outrage. I understand that people in America expect to have more liberty than people in China do, and that in America people expect the police to leave them alone unless they’re breaking the law. But I’ve lived in a number of different countries, and for me it’s been more or less the same everywhere. Morocco, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands. Even as a tourist in Western Europe I’ve been asked to show my passport for no particular reason. And the truth is, if I’m in a country illegally, that country has every right in the world to arrest me, jail me, and deport me.
So some of the reaction to the Arizona law looks to me like it’s cultural: in America people just aren’t used to being asked for their papers, whereas in many other countries it happens regularly. And much of the reaction concerns the racist attitudes towards Hispanics and other people of colour in the U.S. The Arizona law is an invitation to racial profiling and abuse by the police (besides being almost certainly unconstitutional); I understand that, too.
Here’s what I don’t understand, though. If the State of Arizona is so concerned about illegal immigrants, why aren’t they going after the Arizonans who hire illegal immigrants? After all, if illegal immigrants couldn’t find work in Arizona, they wouldn’t be there, would they? And wouldn’t it be easier to track down a relatively small number of employers—folks who own homes and businesses—than it is to track down a large number of individuals living on the margins of society?
It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? So why doesn’t the state go after the employers?
Let me guess.
Because the employers vote. Because the employers are members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. They attend church—the same church “we” do. In short, the state gets most of its support from people who employ illegal immigrants and their friends, neighbours, cousins, etc.
If the state went after the employers, all hell would break loose—not in the Hispanic community, but in the majority Anglo community that controls most of the wealth and power in the state. Everyone would have to face openly the fact that the economy depends on cheap labour supplied by illegal immigrants. And then the business community, looking at fines, jail, and financial ruin, would decide that immigration reform is a pretty damn good idea.
As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” But Arizonans don’t want to hear that. They prefer the enemy to be Somebody Else. Best of all, somebody else who doesn’t have much power to fight back.