Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, Mr. "Rule of Law" and chief architect of SB 1070, is fond of throwing around numbers that purport to show how many people have been killed or injured by undocumented immigrants, often figures he pulls out of his considerable backside. As Stephen Lemons wrote last year in New Times during the run-up to the "paper please" vote:
[Pearce] dropped this one line about how "67 percent" of law enforcement officers killed in "the last few years" have been murdered by illegal aliens... I followed Pearce out and dogged him to the door of the Senate building. I asked him where he got that stat. He could offer no source. I told him that without a source, readers would have to assume he made it up. He gave me an evil eye and said, "You're going to write your story without the truth." Well, if I swallowed this 67 percent figure without questioning Pearce on it, I sure would be.
Killings, robberies, and crime (usually drug-related) were scare tactics that Pearce, Sheriff Joe Apaio, Governor Jan Brewer, and the rest of the brown-hating clique regularly used during the SB 1070 debate. More often than not, their screeds didn't match reality.
For instance, Brewer broke out of her 13-second haze long enough to mumble about "headless bodies" in the desert, but not one law official could cite one incident of a headless body turning up in the desert. In his campaign video, John McCain walked along the border with Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeau (whose jurisdiction happens to be 100 miles north of the wall), harrumpfing "build the dang fence" because crime has gotten out of hand, but those pesky FBI statistics showed crime along the border was down, crime in Arizona was down, and immigration was down. When Babeau's Deputy Louie Puroll was shot in the desert last spring, supposedly by drug runners from Mexico, he became the poster child for why SB 1070 was needed; and both he and Babeau were lionized on FOX and paraded around other right-wing media outlets. Problem is, his story was a lie and he was recently fired. Funny, you didn't see that on FOX, did you?
Lies are their stock-in-trade, and that's also the case with the other anti-immigrantion argument Pearce continues to make: the "cost of illegal immigration" to taxpayers. Many of the "facts" Pearce throws around to demonstrate this "cost" were put together by Kris Kobach, Kansas's new Secretary of State, and the gang at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which essentially wrote SB 1070. Calling FAIR "Teflon Nativists," the Southern Poverty Law Center writes about them:
Founded by [John] Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico's secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Perhaps the best putdown of Pearce and FAIR's "statistics" was provided by Terry Greene Sterling last December, in the article "Russell Pearce and Other Illegal-Immigration Populists Rely on Misleading, Right-Wing Reports to Scapegoat Immigrants and to Terrify Penny-Pinched Americans." It's a very long title for a very long article, but well worth the read. Among other things, Terry demonstrates why FAIR's psuedo-statistics are phony-baloney, such as the one Pearce often tosses out about how immigration costs Arizona taxpayers $2.7 billion (not true). Or 15% of Arizona's prison population is illegal aliens (not true). The article also provides solid research into the relations between Russell Pearce, FAIR, John Tanton, and white supremacist organizations, such as VDARE, the Pioneer Fund, and the Council of Conservative Citizens.
About that "Cost to Taxpayers"
As long as we're talking about the "costs to taxpayers," what does Russell Pearce's have to say about this (video). The CBS investigation into Joshua Pearce, the Senator's son, notes that child abuse charges may be brought against him for the skull fracture sustained last month by his 9-day-old daughter. Prosecutors say Joshua Pearce's story about a "bouncy chair" accident and the severity of the injury don't jibe, nor does his story dovetail with the version told by the family's other children. As of today, Pearce's four children have been placed in foster care, and Joshua is in a drug rehab facility.
In addition to that tragedy, the CBS story also notes that Joshua Pearce has been involved in 31 other incidents with the Mesa Police Department (!) and he has been arrested 10 times for, among other things, domestic violence and extreme DUI while his son was in the car. There's more here if you want to delve into the sordid background. I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Russell Pearce himself is no choir boy, as I wrote in a diary last year:
The mirror of his pal Joe Arpaio, Pearce walks tall like Buford Pusser, a tough-talking hombre who’s always bragging up “the nation of laws” – a playground bully who likes to shove people around. That comes through in the divorce affidavit (PDF) his wife filed in 1980:
“Further, the husband, RUSSELL KEITH PEARCE, is possessed of a violent temper, and has from time to time hit and shoved the wife, the last time being on February 3 [1980], when he grabbed the wife by the throat and threw her down.”
Further, Russell Pearce would likely have a criminal record like his son if he hadn't struck a deal. After bouncing around in several state jobs, Pearce ended up as Director of the Motor Vehicle Division in 1995. After less than four years at MVD he was fired in 1999 for tampering with state files (as was his son, Joshua, who pled guilty). Pearce falsified a woman’s driving record, erasing a DUI, and Transportation Director Mary Peters, a prominent Republican who later served as Bush’s Secretary of Transportation, canned him. The only reason he does not have a blotch on his record is that Peters chose not to prosecute if he quit. Pearce said he was “cleared," but Peters told the Arizona Republic: “There’s a big difference between being cleared and choosing not to file criminal charges” (Aug 21, 1999).
So, this guy is the President of Arizona's Senate, the man who has a voice in what bills will and won't see the light of day. The state continues to swill down the economic toilet; our public education system ranks 50th in just about every important indicator; universities and social services are being cut to the bone or eliminated; as the nation's eyes are on our mental health system because of Tucson, the Governor throws tens of thousands of people out the door; and Arizonans are dying because Brewer can't find $1.5 million in the $185 million federal stimulus for organ transplants (at the same time she can appropriate $50 million for the private prison industry). Bold moves by smart people are what's called for, but with Pearce at the helm we're sure to see the legislature spend time on more ethnic studies bans in public schools, more restrictions on gay marriage, an assault on the 14th Amendment, and of course more restrictions on brown people from the south because, you know, all immigrants are criminals and they cost us billions of dollars.
Well, they aren't and they don't. Who is and who does is Russell Pearce's son. So if the Senator wants to continue yammering about the "Rule of Law" and how he's the defender of taxpayers, maybe he should start at home, as Stephen Lemons writes in today's New Times:
Russell Pearce is always attempting to link illegal immigrants with criminal activity and to supposed costs to the taxpayer... And yet, his son Joshua has cost the state a great deal in police response, court costs, foster care for his kids, and so forth.
Indeed, the average undocumented immigrant is more respectful of law enforcement than Joshua's been during his 30 years on this planet. That Joshua has so far escaped imprisonment is astounding. If he were undocumented, he would have been deported by now.