This piece originally appeared as an OpEd in the .
Several weeks ago, when Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the anti-gay Senate Bill 1062, she urged us to "turn the ugliness of the debate...into a renewed search for greater respect and understanding." She cited "non-discrimination" as a core value among Arizonans.
It's time now for the governor to follow her own advice and live out her own words.
The governor must re-examine her support for Senate Bill 1070, which is nothing more than state-sanctioned discrimination. This law gives law-enforcement officers across the state an excuse to harass Latinos, to turn anyone who "looks Mexican" or "foreign" into a suspect.
When Brewer signed SB 1070 into law on April 23, 2010, she said she would "not tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona." But the incidents documented by the Ƶ of police officers demanding that Latinos prove their citizenship or immigration status say the opposite.
Section 2(B) of SB 1070 — also known as the "show me your papers" provision — is being aggressively enforced in communities statewide. Officers rely on their own biases, using skin color or manner of speaking as a reason to stop and question someone.
Officers are questioning passengers during traffic stops, crime victims and witnesses and even young students in school about their immigration status.
Phoenix police questioned a middle-school student and his mother — both U.S. citizens — about their immigration status after arresting the child for getting into a fight near the school bus. Mesa police jailed a 67-year-old U.S. citizen — ostensibly for picking a water bottle out of a trash can in a convenience-store parking lot — so they could check his immigration status. Tucson police turned a middle-school student over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents despite the fact that he was eligible to remain in the U.S.
There are dozens of other stories like these — and more are accumulating each day SB 1070 remains on the books.
The governor got what she needed out of SB 1070; she was elected to a second term. But her political gain was Arizona's loss. She has spent — and continues to spend — millions of taxpayer dollars defending a law that has had devastating consequences on our economy, reputation and communities.
SB 1070 and similar anti-immigrant laws in other states have proven to be failed experiments, and the tide has turned against them. Since 2011, no state has passed an SB 1070-like law, and many jurisdictions are now passing immigrant-friendly legislation. Alabama and South Carolina recently stopped defending laws similar to SB 1070 after realizing that they are costly, divisive and discriminatory.
As we approach the four-year anniversary of SB 1070, Gov. Brewer should right her wrong. She should live up to the values of non-discrimination she embraced during her SB 1062 veto message and stop defending SB 1070.
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