Five years ago, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of people marched in big cities and small towns across the U.S. demanding justice for the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented residents. Hitting a high point with work stoppages on May Day 2006, the pro-immigrant protest was the largest social movement in the U.S. since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War years.
Mounting a counter-offensive, immigration restrictionists blocked legislation in Washington to legalize undocumented persons, while at the state and local levels they enacted a smattering of immigration-related laws and ordinances.
Though the jury is still out, it’s looking increasingly likely that the restrictionist movement has overreached and could have hit its own peak with the passage of Arizona’s SB 1070 last year, the controversial law that requires local police to interrogate and detain people they stop who are suspected of being in this country without papers.
With key parts of the law blocked in the federal court system for now, and massive grassroots opposition to it continuing, SB 1070 could be losing its luster to potential supporters. What’s more, Arizona lawmakers have recently backed down from approving several immigration-related measures, including a bill to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. of undocumented parents.
After Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law one year ago, the conventional wisdom was that “Arizona copy-cat legislation would move quickly in other states,” Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), told reporters in a phone conference last week.
“The copy-cat wave seems to have fallen,” Murguia contended.
Of 31 states which have witnessed attempts at passing SB 1070 clones, 22 have rejected them so far, a new NCLR report notes. However, the 2011 legislative season is still not over yet in a number of states, the NCLR cautions, and a law similar to SB 1070 is sitting on Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s desk. Lawmakers in Florida and other states are also considering immigration bills. Utah has gone the route of SB 1070, but also has approved a controversial guest worker program to regularize the status of undocumented people in the state.
Arizona Republican state Senator Russell Pearce, sponsor of SB 1070, recently told National Public Radio that his law was a success. Pearce claimed that SB 1070 had reduced crime, resulted in a 500-inmate reduction in state prisons and encouraged between 100,000 and 200,000 people to flee ...