During the hearing on Georgia's HB 87, a replication of Arizona's notorious SB 1070, Judge Thomas Thrash posed a hypothetical scenario: an 18-year-old man is driving his mother to church. He is a citizen, while his mother is not. Under HB 87, would the son be a criminal? The question is not a theoretical matter for thousands of families in Georgia, and millions nationwide. It is reality.
After Judge Thrash issued a preliminary injunction blocking portions of Georgia's HB 87 yesterday, many are wondering what it means and what comes next. The injunction, which stops sections of Georgia's racist anti-immigration law, forestalls the further criminalization of immigrant families on one hand while advancing it with the parts that went unblocked on the other.
Beyond the injunction, there is an emerging domestic human rights crisis caused by the country's unjust immigration laws. The politics of exclusion behind the bill have led to dehumanizing policies, but immigrants in Georgia are organizing to defend themselves with potential benefits for us all. To move forward, we must expand our circle of compassion.
While the legal battles in Arizona, Indiana, Utah, and now Georgia have been heroic and have mitigated the harm of these states' hate bills, the fact that the emergency court rulings only offer us partial protections is a warning of clear and present danger for people of color. Our rights are being eroded, and our lives have worsened as a result of the poisonous normalization of these repugnant proposals.
In Georgia, just like in Arizona, parts of the anti-immigrant proposals have survived judicial scrutiny, with impacts yet unknown. These Arizona-style bills may be acting as trojan horses. Behind the clearly unconstitutional components set to be struck down are new laws that advance the targeting of immigrants and further imperil civil rights in ways that threaten us all.
With such seething racial animus behind nativist laws and a sophisticated media engine driving anti-immigrant hysteria, it is natural to view the temporary defeat of 1070 copycats as partial victories. When a community is so suffocated by hate and so thoroughly under siege, any respite will feel like an advance.
In Georgia, some referred to the partial injunction of HB 87 as "a breath of fresh air." Yet the unenjoined sections of the bill set to move forward July 1 and onward are anticipated to be devastating. In a similar moment in Arizona last year, we recalled the words of Malcolm X, "You don't stab me with a six-inch knife, pull it out three inches, and call that progress." While some egregious sections of HB 87 were stopped, those moving forward include penalties of up to 15 years prison and $250,000 in fines for use of false work papers, mandatory worksite inspections, desktop raids, among other things. Twenty-one of 23 sections will be implemented. True progress than will be found through the organizing in the neighborhoods by and among those affected.
Perhaps some citizens can temporarily breathe easier knowing they are less likely to be targeted than their undocumented neighbors. However, for hardworking people who have no entry point into the workforce, doing what they must to earn their daily bread may now be treated as a more heinous crime than those charged with actual violence. Next month for example, Jose Antonio Vargas, the reporter who recently came out as undocumented would face the possibility of 15 years in prison for his Pulitzer prize-winning work if done in Georgia.
The 18-year-old in the Judge's hypothetical may be temporarily taken out of the crosshairs in one sense, but he is not likely to catch his breath. Like the rest of his family, he is still under attack.
As Adelina Nicholls of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) explained, "our communities still face discrimination from police empowered by the Obama administration." The federal government has already created programs that act as a conduit for prejudiced policing in places like Gwinnett and Cobb counties. There, like other places where Secure Communities has recently been activated, the likelihood of status checks, pretextual arrests, and rights violations remain unabated, with or without HB 87.
The battle in Georgia has served to crystallize the contradiction we all live with, in a country that accepts our labor but denies our humanity. We are moving forward, but because of fending off parts of the most recent attack. HB 87 is a symptom of a far bigger disease that has infected our politics and resulted in policies of dehumanization. We are moving forward; the passage of HB 87 has become the impetus for new bottom-up organizing. In doing so, we expand our circle of compassion to include all, especially our undocumented brothers and sisters.
Expanding our circle of compassion means accepting this hard truth: there is no partial solution to a human rights crisis. We cannot celebrate the defense of civil rights for some at the expense of the human rights for all. Progress requires listening to, learning from, and accepting the voices of this generation's immigrant families. In Georgia, Arizona, and elsewhere, excluded immigrants, or 'Americans in Waiting,' are laboring for inclusion. When they prevail, and they will prevail, we will all win.
Follow Pablo Alvarado on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ndlon
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We have immigration limits in the USA because five times in the past unrestricted immigration has led to devastating unemployment. Unemployment as bad as 30% nationwide and over 50% in several states. The unemployment rates of the Great Depression pale in comparison to this.
We also have an immigration process so that criminals cannot gain entry into the USA. Illegal Immigration by-passes both controls. You cannot love your neighbors and have compassion for them if you do not respect them and the reasons they have for having their laws.
Why is it always a one way street when it comes to Illegal Immigration? Love and compassion must go only one way? Love and compassion is demanded for the person breaking the law, yet there is no love and compassion for the poor American forced out of work. No love and compassion for the poor Taxpayer forced to pay for it all. No love and compassion for the victim of identity theft. No love and compassion for the lost green space and the animals that populate it as we sacrifice it on the altar of explosive population growth. Where is the love and compassion? Lost in the narcissistic scramble for personal preference. Love for oneself and what one can take from others is not the epitome of compassion.
I hope the salutation is correct as my Spanish is a bit lacking. I find your quote "when they prevail, and they will prevail, we all win" to be insulting to each and every legal citizen of the United States. I can only say to you NO THEY WON'T.
Billions of U.S. tax dollars is given to foreigners every year when they use our emergency rooms as free health clinics, get free educations for their kids and welfare checks for their anchor babies.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/05/local/la-me-illegal-welfare-20100906
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/apr/most-illegal-immigrant-families-collect-welfare
Nevada has the highest unemployment rate and the highest percentage of illegal workers in the country.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/pew-report-nevada-leads-in-number-of-illegal-workers-115030374.html
Illegal immigrants depress our wages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE2tNO3Uvs0
Illegal immigrants commit crimes such as identity theft and tax evasion.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-immigration-fraud-idUSTRE71N68920110224
Half of the FBI's most wanted for homicide in America are Mexican citizens.
http://www.bing.com/browse?g=fbis_most_wanted&form=msnhed>1=36010#toc=0&citizenship_rbid=20,35&wanted_for_rbid=38
To expect foreigners who have no respect for our laws to become law-abiding Americans citizens is illogical. Many illegal immigrants are not here to assimilate, but to take over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYSjFx-Qz4I
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/hispanicleaders.asp
http://www.politicalforum.com/current-events/127275-pro-illegal-immigrant-group-threatens-kill-americans-axes.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/arizona-teacher-middle-immigration-debat