Activity Eleven

I'm sure you've all heard a lot about this intercultural conflict happening in Arizona. The governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, signed a bill on illegal immigration and essentially the goal of the bill is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants. If an immigrant is caught without their immigration documents it is considered a crime and the police have broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced. There are many opponents to this bill, including President Obama, and they feel that it gives Arizona residents the right to harass or discriminate against hispanics. It won't actually go into effect until August, if it ever does go into effect due to many court challenges. Many people support this bill because illegal immigration is a problem in the border states, but many do not, especially the hispanic citizens of Arizona because they feel the law will encourage racial and ethnic profiling.

There are really two major conflicts involved in this debate. Basically, the citizens of Arizona want to ideally eliminate illegal immigration or if not that at least decrease it, but in doing so will be profiling, judging, or discriminating, even though they say these will not be tolerated. I don't see how they won't be profiling because the illegal immigrants are coming from Mexico, but there also many legal immigrants who will still be questioned or possibly worse.

The culture of the US is very individualistic, and in this situation it's not individual as in one person, but individual as in one state. They decided they wanted the illegal immigrants out and so they created a bill and sent it through the system to be approved instead of maybe making negotiations or somehow involving the other side of this argument. They were obviously much more concerned about their own agenda than about the well-being of the hispanics who weren't doing anything wrong. I don't know that hispanics have a collectivistic culture or individualistic, but they have been opposing this bill using phone calls and protests which are still direct forms of voicing their opinions. In this situation I feel they have the right to be verbal and direct because there is a great chance that they will be treated very poorly if the bill is put into action.

There should be a way to resolve this issue other than this bill. Put more guards at the borders or hire other hispanics to become informants of some sort. I don't think this problem will ever be totally eradicated, but there are better approaches than this. Both sides just need to sit down and formulate a plan rather than just arguing with each other constantly. I understand both sides of the argument. I think if people want to come to America they need to do it the correct way and abide by our laws, but I don't feel those who do abide by our laws deserve any sort of punishment for being a part of the same ethnicity as those who don't. I feel that no matter how much the state of Arizona promises that racial profiling won't happen, it will. I don't see how else this bill would be effective at all.

Question: What do you think the governor of Arizona could have done to address this issue in a better manner? What are alternatives to solving this problem without creating racial profiling or discrimination?