American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—which has lowered trade barriers between U.S., Canada and Mexico since 1994. Arizona might not be the new Mississippi, but it has enacted repressive laws that are as unjust and immoral as lynch laws of the past—and, in Dr. Martin Luther King‘s words: ―Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…‖ Residents of Arizona have a choice to make: to uphold unjust laws that criminalize whole classes of people whose labor we depend upon; or to stand with those ―runaways‖ seeking a better life for their families still trapped by economic deprivation ―down South‖ in Mexico? Despite polls suggesting most Americans support laws such as SB 1070 which criminalize Mexican migrants, the open secret is that most Americans are dependent upon migrants to pick fruit and vegetables in the blazing sun; to labor in our front lawns or landscaped backyards; to clean our houses, cook our food, and even raise our children—all for minimum wages, tips, and few benefits. Some believe that ―illegals‖ don‘t deserve decent wages or health benefits for these jobs, even though most of us would not perform these menial, back-breaking chores for any amount of money! So, why focus on criminalizing workers who flee to the U.S. as a result of NAFTA? It‘s because, in part, Arizona‘s economy thrives on low-wage restaurant workers, agricultural laborers, construction workers, and landscapers, nannies and domestics. Arizona businesses cannot afford to pay migrants wages or benefits equal to those of U.S. citizens—and this fact confounds immigrants who are routinely denied access to citizenship. It will never happen so long as the economy requires their continued exploitation.2 Furthermore, Arizona‘s SB 1070 legalizes racial profiling that is very similar to statutes from the ―Black Codes‖ and Jim Crow eras. State and local police would be required to detain anyone they reasonably suspect to have immigrated illegally—but police must not use racial profiling to determine who is in the country illegally. In a state already noted for
See: MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (UC Press, 2010), by Kelly Lytle Hernández. Focusing on the daily challenges of policing the borderlands and bringing to light unexpected partners and forgotten dynamics, Migra! reveals how the U.S. Border Patrol translated the mandate for comprehensive migration control into a project of policing Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. When the Border Patrol started in 1924, the main targets of the nation's immigration laws were not illegal Mexican immigrants. In fact, Mexican agricultural workers were valued by American farmers and were exempt from key restrictions, namely the national quota system that strictly limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. each year. 2
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