I know many of us have been bothered by the nativist bills coming out of the AZ legislature. The other morning after getting off from work, drove down to south Tucson to get a good chorizo and pappas breakfast burrito before heading back to Sierra Vista/Hereford. Driving through southside, it hit me; the Tea Party legislature is going to cause some serious blowback in the coming years with their anti immigrant agenda.
So the legislature creates several laws that if your here in Arizona without papers you can't legally drive, work or go to school. Fearful to seek healthcare or rent decent housing hoping they won't be reported to immigration agencies. I guess the idea had been a gentle ethnic cleansing forcing 'illegal migrants' back to Mexico. However, the reality is so much different. These were already the working poor. Where are they going to go and with what money? What of several thousand kids who won't be going to public schools? You think we have a gang problem now? The AZ Tea party legislature will in effect create a class of 'untouchables' here in AZ. People who won't have the money to move anywhere else. Who can't legally work or send their kids to schools. So what does that leave them? Working in the shadows. Scared to call law enforcement. A group of people with no rights, prey for the worst abuses in our society.
Like the alternative fuels mess the Republican legislature created in the late 90's, this one will blow up even worse in the coming years. Estimates run there are approximately 450,000 undocumented aliens in AZ, does the legislature really think we can detain even a small percentage of that with the current budget environment. The Dept of Corrections is already busting at the seams with the number of DUI inmates from the tougher DUI laws passed 2 years ago. Not to mention the time bomb of thousand of kids who will be pulled out of schools by fearful parents trying to avoid deportation. Unable to even work fast food, what options are left to teenagers for making money. When you have nothing sometimes you do what you normally wouldn't (robbery, drug dealing etc). We'll all be paying for the 'Tea Party Revolution of 2010' for years to come.