sb1070

(by Lalo Alcaraz)

If you haven't heard, Arizona just passed a law encouraging local law enforcement to harass, arrest, detain, and even deport people on the basis of looking like an immigrant. Wow. Or as Jill and Jack Politics put it, "If you ain't white - get ready to carry papers in Arizona."

Or as Dr. and Reverend Warren H. Stewart exclaimed to a full crowd at Phoenix’s First Institutional Baptist Church and anyone who can watch YouTube, "Thank you Arizona legislature for SB1070...You have awakened the 21st century civil rights movement!" (via RaceWire).

Many people are organizing and mobilizing against it (and have been since forever). At least one county sheriff has refused to enforce it. There's a good chance is will be overturned in a lawsuit. But still this is only further institutionalizing a police state against brown skinned people in this country. Will this provide a spark for national level immigration reform? According to RaceWire's analysis, it's still not gonna happen anytime soon the way Congress is behaving. AHHHHHHHHHH!

On the question of immigration reform...Here is an important read by Renee Sauced of La Raza Centro Legal (via enough) about why this country doesn't need any immigration reform, but just immigration reform.

The Schumer-Graham immigration reform bill, for example, would require a National ID card for everyone who works in the U.S., something that kind of freaks out a lot of people (but is it really that much more than we already have with drivers licenses, passports, social security numbers, credit ratings, etc?).

ALSO: There's a growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico creeping towards Louisiana, the potential worst oil spill in the U.S. the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

(Pretty much all of the immigration law info on this post is from New America Media and the blog RaceWire. Go to them for comprehensive coverage.)