Immigrant Rights Rally, Union Square Park, New York City, May 1, 2010
“For any lawful stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town, or other political subdivision of this state in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town in this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation. Any person who is arrested shall have the person’s immigration status determined before the person is released” (Revisions to Arizona’s laws from SB1070 and HB2162).
Ten years ago, a Tucson police officer “lawfully stopped” me when I wasn’t doing anything.
It was the summer after I graduated from high school; college was set, classes were over, and life was goooooooood. I had started to rediscover the parts of living in Tucson, Arizona that I’d loved as a child but that just weren’t cool enough for me in my early teens: starry nights, sunsets, hikes, and the tranquility of the desert.
I remember one spot at the eastern end of Broadway Blvd. where I had my first cigarette, miles away from my father’s long nose and longer lectures. Frightened into submission by years of anti-smoking ad campaigns about additives and unfiltered cigarettes but also intensely curious, I’d visited a tobacco shop, bought rolling tobacco, papers, and filters, and headed out into the middle of nowhere to figure out what all the hype was about. It took me forever to figure how to roll the damn thing, and even longer to figure out how to do it with a filter. I lit it up, took a few puffs, and about five seconds later mistook the buzz and high heart rate for imminent lonely-wilderness-death. I got the hell back to town in a fright and promised myself I’d never do that again.
A month or so later I was back in that same spot – this time without any tobacco and with two of my friends: Maggie, whose family had come to the U.S. from Mexico several years before when her father got a job teaching at the University of Arizona, and Brian, whose family had recently moved to Tucson from Maryland.
On this warm summer night, the stars were out, the air was still and the three of us hadn’t come there to do anything but just take it all in. We had been enjoying the silence for about ten minutes when we heard the noise of a distant car. The noise grew louder, and after a few seconds it became obvious that it was traveling very fast. Not knowing who it was, we cautiously got back into the car.
Before we had any time to react, a huge SUV zoomed up and screeched to a halt just a few feet behind my little 1990 Geo Prizm. Petrified, I started the car. I couldn’t go forward because we’d run out of road, so I kicked it into reverse, and that’s when the driver of the SUV finally decided to let me know he was a police officer by turning on his roof lights. Bursts of light pierced the darkness, polluting the desert around us with eerie red and blue flashes.
The officer got out of his car, came to my window, and asked me to turn the engine off. He asked me why I had tried to get out of there so quickly, but wouldn’t hear it when I tried to explain to him that we hadn’t known it was a police car coming to scare the bejesus out of us. He told Maggie and me to get out of the car, leaving Brian – who is white – in the backseat. He took my license back to his car to run it, leaving Maggie and me to watch the cacti and shrubs around us flash red and blue, red and blue. When it became clear that though he was looking for an excuse he wasn’t going to find one, he got back into his car and drove off. Maggie and I re-joined an equally petrified Brian, who’d been afraid that the officer would find the camping knife he always kept in his pocket.
Shattered and shaking, we left not long after, and as we passed the second intersection on the way back we saw the officer’s headlights further down that road, waiting for whoever was next.
The new Arizona immigration law gives me chills because had it been in effect ten years ago, that police officer might have had the excuse he was looking for. According to the new law, anyone whom a law enforcement officer reasonably suspects is undocumented must provide proof of legal presence in the US. Even though I had a driver license, Maggie did not. And if someone else had been driving I might not have had mine either. Would the officer who was just looking for an excuse have arrested us? And although the law states explicitly that no official may “consider race, color, or national origin” when they implement the policy, is that how it’s really going to go down every time, given that in this case the two brown kids got pulled out of the car but the white kid didn’t?
I hope no one will mistake what I’m saying. I don’t believe that every law enforcement officer is a bad apple; in fact, during every other interaction I’ve had with a member of the Tucson Police Department I felt I was treated professionally if not courteously. But this incident sticks with me because the officer’s behavior seemed so predatory. When there are such officers who do this, how can we know that the training that goes into implementing this law across the state will adequately address issues like racial profiling? How can we know that every officer will recognize a driver’s license as a valid form of ID without pushing to see another form of ID?
When the rhetoric around the issue of immigration is so virulent that sometimes the distinction between documented and undocumented workers is swept away, none of us should accept such a law, because we all stand to lose from it.
A few weeks ago I was in Toronto for a family function. My dad had just arrived from Tucson, so the topic of the new Arizona law naturally came up over lunch at someone’s house. There were several Indians (Canadian and American) around my age in the room, and what struck me was that the ones from Canada knew much more about the law and its implications than the ones living in the U.S.
Given that several other state legislatures are crafting similar bills to Arizona’s SB1070, I just want to ask – what’s up with that? Do cosmopolitan American Brownz* think that they won’t be “lawfully stopped” by “reasonably suspicious” police officers? Because it happened to Maggie and me, immigrant kids from Mexico and Madras.
If I haven’t made my point clearly enough, here’s Broken Lizard to do it for me (ignore the weird editing – this was the only clip I could find):
* In case Razib has taken out a trademark, here’s the credit.
Vivek: You need to chill out, yaar. Cops in India/Mexico are the corrupt, abusing types.
This is 2010 in America. Cops would never kick an American born brown kid on his head and stomp on his feet on zero provocation while shouting ‘I am going to beat the fucking Mexican piss out of you’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-aCVrG-M_0
Serious applause for Vivek- this is so disturbing.
Despite anything the sycophants and apologists may babble, AZ has a serious problem with nonwhite folk. Desis are not immune or capable of whiting out into the background. Remember Balbir Singh Sodhi.
“I don’t believe that every law enforcement officer is a bad apple.”
The problem is that the law requires each police offer and each department to act like a bad apple, or else to fear lawsuits from the nuttier Arizonans
Im not a expert on the issue, but why cant it be illegal to hire illegals? Why go straight for “Pull every brown guy over” instead of making it a requirement to show that you are here with the right papers when you apply for a job? The only down side is that this might lead to an increase in identity theft.
Shallow Thinker: It is already illegal to hire illegals.
It’s already a crime; it’s just (relatively) lightly punished and hard to enforce. AFAIK, the hiring/payment of undocumented immigrants for labor tends to be under-the-table in any case. (Although many pay income tax on what they earn.)
Of course, if you start truly enforcing the use of undocumented labor, you start running aground of business interests who secretly rely on it etc etc etc. Welcome to the messy immigration debate.
ShallowThinker,
The existing law already made it illegal to hire undocumented workers. The amendments to the law make it more stringent, particularly with regard to transportation. Check out pgs 5 & 6 of SB 1070, linked above.
as far as i can tell, the reality of the situation is we on the right pretend to be opposed to illegal immigration (i mean, hey, its illegal!) while secretly looking the other way because we don’t want to spend 20 bucks on a banana.
in return, the left pretends to be for minimum wage laws but agrees to look the other way cause they don’t like 20 dollar bananas either.
so, the pretending is just a platonic noble lie designed to keep the savages in line–basically the right-wing nationalists who may start a race war but also the poor and yound who may wake up one day and say “hey, ‘i’d do some day-labor work if it paid well”–which generally works until you hit a recession, which generally is a good time for economic populism, and the savages begin to get hip to the scheme.
but the boycotts are just upsetting the savages. other than challenging the law in court (we have to wait until they actually violate someones rights b/f we have an unreasonable search and seizure case) i think we should do nothing and try to ride it out. assuming there’s no double dip (granted big assumption, given the EU), once unemployment ( i mean its a laggard) catches up to the reality of tarps huge success (thanks hank and tim and bald indian guy), we can go back to the happy noble lie keeping everyone in line.
Illegals mexicans make a mexico of all of America.
no credit needed 🙂
Don’t know what the fuss is about. I am Indian and I carry my driver’s license with me anywhere I go. What is so hard about that? I used to live in Germany for 2 years, and you could be stopped without any reason and be asked for an ID. If you don’t have your State ID (which only citizens got), you had to show your passport. If you didn’t have it on you, you were given time to show it. Nobody seemed to complain about that.
I was driving in I5 along the Mexican border a couple of years ago with 2 of my friends, one of them did not have any ID with him. Rightly so, we had to wait nearly 2 hours for his paper work to be faxed across. We berated him for not having any ID with him. If you are dumb not to know the rules, you pay for it.
Yes it is bound to be abused a wee bit, but it is worth the hassle for the greater good of stamping out illegal immigration, and AZ seems to be have the most problem with the US, so go for it!
Excellent recap, Manju!
Al, did German citizens have to demonstrate the legality of their status too? What about non-white citizens of Germany? Or is that a contradiction in terms?
Thisa is not supposed to be India. This is not Germany. I am not going to take it quietly if I am harrassed for not having my drivers license if I AM NOT DRIVING.
I did notice a double standard with cops. Indians are like ciphers to them. If we are with white friends, we get treated normal. If we are with black friends, we get treated like blacks. If we are with another Indian, then it gets unpredictable.
ID checks area normal part of life in many european states from what i gather. i’m in europe right now travelling and everyone has advised me to keep my passport on my person cuz you never know when the police may ask. is this strange?
Indians are like ciphers to them. If we are with white friends, we get treated normal. If we are with black friends, we get treated like blacks. If we are with another Indian, then it gets unpredictable.
it depends on what we look like, right? some of us look like black people with straighter hair. some of us look like mediterranean people. most of us look like the darker skinned mexicans (yes, i know this may not be accurate to brown people, but i’m speaking from the perspective of a law enforcement official who may not be schooled in ethnic distinctions).
That’s because of our Canadian snowbirds. There are editorials, articles, pop-culture references to the new Arizona law in our local newspaper. Even the national TV reminds our snowbirds, who, in my personal experience, are usually mostly white Canadians, to keep proof of their Canadian-ness readily available to avoid unnecessary distress.
Aj, the problem arises when the law is not applied equally. The biggest issue that most people (myself included) is what constitutes reasonable suspicion. If it’s the colour of your skin, as Vivek pointed out, it is a big problem – as the guy with the dark skin could just as easily be a US citizen/resident as the guy with white skin could have been a tourist that overstayed his visa. It is just like airport security in the US post-9/11 – all those “random” searches in the name of security were not so random, after all.
as the guy with the dark skin could just as easily be a US citizen/resident as the guy with white skin could have been a tourist that overstayed his visa.
let’s be accurate here. it’s the guy with medium skin. black americans aren’t assumed to be non-natives. one reason richard reid, a black briton (or mixed to be precise) was outside of profile. so if you’re a dark skinned south asian shave your head and pretend you’re black (at least if you’re a dude).
I spent 6 years in Tucson. I’ve made many road trips in the area, heading west on I-8 and east on I-10. I’ve been pulled over more times and spent more time waiting at the edge of the desert than I care to remember (and on I-8, a driver’s license was never enough, only a passport was). Like Pravin says, being pulled over definitely seemed contingent upon our travel partners.
Great now how about the other socialist things Europeans have? Affordable healthcare, excellent public transport, politicians with brains (and not not ones who sit on them like…)
Suggestion for wingnuts, Chill, and…
42% of K-12 in Arizona are Hispanic; 30% of Arizona is Hispanic, 67% of Arizona’s Hispanics are US-Born, 91% of AZ Hispanics are Mexican American
…learn some arithmetic.
Leaving aside Manju’s attempt at spreading the blame, the anti-illegal movement is a movement led by the Republicans in this country. Yes, not all Republicans are for this movement, likewise not all Democrats are pro-illegal. But let’s get real. Bush’s Amnesty Plan was derailed by the Republicans and right wing talk radio. The Anti-Illegal legislation proposed in states across the nation is being led by Republicans in their State legislatures. I am sure some Democrats here or there is as anti-illegal as your average Republican, but it’s just not an issue which animates the Democratic lawmakers.
Depends on where you are. Out West in cattle ranching country they can have some reservations about the national party’s priorities.
Maybe these dudes were just asking the Bangla for his papers: http://gothamist.com/2010/05/24/was_muslims_beating_a_hate_crime_or.php
What is the point of a law like this? There are only three ways to enforce something like this:
(1) specifically target brown skin people or people with accents, despite the fact that the large majority of these are citizens.
(2) just get it over with and set up random checkpoints for everyone.
(3) even better: give all citizens tattoos on their foreheads. “666” would be a nice touch, but probably too much to hope for. in all likelihood we’d have to settle for “TEAM USA”.
no matter how it is done, the majority of victims will always be us citizens.
Check the history of this illustrious state and other recent legislation including accents on english teachers. If you still see no fuss, you probably need a brain tumor removed.
Sorry, the bill is due, hopefully our own pyramid schemish welfare system won’t take us down. But look on the bright side, we can import some young immigrants to help pay the bill:
“We can no longer afford the old social model, and there is a real need for structural reform.â€
vivek,
now, I get to ask YOU to write more! If there was a way to screen out the adrenalin junkies and ego-maniacal personalities, you’d probably have a police force capable of taking the house bill with a shaker full of salt and letting people be–but PDs around the country actively screen for those groups and encourage, “I just want to do right,” types to join up and give free reign to their superhero delusions in the course of protecting of serving. Another idea would be to even out the work-load so no cops get so bored as to consider your teenage self to be a threat which registers on the official risk meter. Or we could just make Radley Balko required daily reading for all cops and have Barry Cooper do quality control with stings.
Call me when Europe decides to abolish their safety net and retirement programs…
Pyramid? Great, SM must be the only place where you get your reality dose, when you done watching Faux News and listening to WGNT-AM. Here too there are some simple proposals making the rounds, such as removing the cap on Soc.Sec. taxes. Maybe when Soc.Sec. becomes unsustainable and the Tea-Party DBs are reduced to eating cat food, since >85% of Tea-Partiers are welfare kings/queens – which is why you see that cute sign KIIP UR GUMMINT HANDZ OFF MY MIDYKARE we will start getting everyone to contribute to Soc.Sec. (as they do in Europe) rather than just the working poor – as we do here. Also given the disaster that “market based” solutions to retirement have been, not even Sue “Chicken” Lowden and Sarah “Fleein'” Palin (in other words sub-75 IQs) is suggesting a stock market based soc.security fund.
But before all that happens we may be standing in line for jobs in China, when the Chambers of Commerce, Wall St thugs and their GOP beneficiaries are done gutting US manufacturing! That is of course if Texas doesn’t secede and/or grow dumb with the new GOP social studies curriculum!
Its not like the cops are having it easy either…
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/arizona-deputy-shot-by-alleged-undocumented-immigrants-authorities-say/?hpt=T2
Europe is on the verge of a total meltdown with their financial crisis. I doubt their social services will be carry on without major cut backs in the coming years. And what’s with the Daily Kos style hysterical comments ?
@Pravin: How hard is it to carry your driver’s license / ID with you? If you are still harassed, yes there is a problem. Agreed.
@ak: yes, chance are the brown skinned ppl will be asked for their papers more than the white skinned. So are the odds, that the brown skinned are illegal compared to the whites. It is the fact. So what if a citizen is asked for some form of ID, during a traffic stop?
@Darth Paul: I am interested only in the new immigration law not about the history of AZ. I am entitled to my opinion, so are you. Does not mean I need to have my head examined.
Let’s stay on topic; when you bring old left/right crud about social insurance pyramids into the comments, the internet gets more boring.
To give some credit to Manju: he’s pointing at something true, that neither conservatives nor liberals (for the most part) are able to be real about reconciling their love of cheap goods with their various anti-immigrant concerns (omg min wage / omg brown ppl). Still, the current problem with the rise in nativism seems to be with parts of the Republican base (which I think Manju is referring to as the “savages”?), and those Republican politicians who choose to profit from their fringes.
Ultimately: this law does fuck all for actually improving border security but promises to be a grand success in terms of citizen harassment per capita.
Aj and all other AZ apologists, are you for real?
As for as Germany—why even compare to the lowest denominator? Which continental European country has a visible non-white population? Visible not as in cleaning toilets, but as people in real power like in the US or Canada?
The point is, people make a big deal against “illegal” immigration as if it were a great moral issue. The morality of immigration is restricted to freeloading—meaning that if an illegal immigrant paid taxes in full, her presence in public US land would be legally wrong but not ethically. You would still deport illegals because they violated a law—maybe even fine their employers big time to discourage automatic violations, but you would have no justification to encourage hatred of illegals. Then, your laws would not aim at “catching and screwing them” but to make sure all taxes are paid—very different from asking police to round them up. (Like, as I am told, in New Mexico—any one has more information on this?)
Since there is little urgency in enforcing the tax issue (wages are usually paid by people who are here, not some shadows you dont see)—which would be a lot easier than rounding up and deporting illegals—I infer that the real intent of this law is not about illegals bleeding the government resources. And just because every apologist exploits the tragic death of the rancher to make their case, the case hardly proves that criminals are more prevalent among illegal immigrants. If it isn’t about resource drain or crime, what remains, however uncomfortable, is that the AZs just don’t want the Mexicans around. You can clothe it in all the sophistry you want, but I call it racism.
“Vivek: You need to chill out, yaar. Cops in India/Mexico are the corrupt, abusing types.”
You are probably being sarcastic here, but others use the above very very often without any sarcasm. To those people: just because you don’t treat the authority of Indian law with the same respect you have for American law, it doesn’t mean you can spout any nonsense you want. In India as well, a bulk of the cops aren’t despicable villains, just as in the US—but a minority are villains in both countries. The question is whether the laws help the villains or leash them.
@Aj – Important details: there is no national ID in the US, and a out-of-state ID is not valid for the purposes of the AZ law. So it’s passport or nothing, which isn’t really something you tend to carry around.
(Also: the point of mentioning AZ’s policy with teachers is to point out a trend of xenophobic laws. Don’t miss the forest for the trees here.)
The fact is that if I’m driving with White Friend Paul over the AZ border, one of us needs to make sure his papers are in order to avoid police harassment, while the other one of us is fine. I don’t think being treated like a second-class citizen is acceptable. (I’m sorry to hear you’re okay with that, Aj.)
AJ stated: @ak: yes, chance are the brown skinned ppl will be asked for their papers more than the white skinned. So are the odds, that the brown skinned are illegal compared to the whites.
AJ: There is a pesky little document called the Constitution which has silly things like the Fourteenth Amendment which does not allow for the above.
This law is about racial profiling. By illegal immigrant they mean Mexican, and any brown person who they mistake for Mexican. I seriously doubt the Arizona police is going to question any white person to check if he or she is an illegal. AND there are plenty of illegal white immigrants. Illegal Mexicans are their target not all illegal immigrants. This is why this law really is racist.
They should instead enforce the laws against people and businesses who hire illegal immigrants no matter what ethnicity. The ones who hire are breaking the law. They are the demand, the illegal Mexicans are the supply meeting the demand. In the end, this law may indeed reduce illegal Mexican immigration (that is who this bill sadly is really targeting) because the situation has gotten more dangerous for them, and ironically the very businesses who hire them will have to now function without them. The businesses wanted it both ways – to hire illegal Mexican immigrants and to have the law target the illegal Mexicans and not them.
@AJ,
It isn’t just about carrying the DL. If you don’t have one, you may be detained till the officer is convinced things are right. There is no built in security to ensure that the officer does things fast. In your story, the cop would have taken your friend to jail till he felt like checking on it.
And just because most illegal immigrants happen to be Mexican is no reason to stop Mexican looking people—the chance that a randomly stopped Mexican looking person in the US is illegally here is very miniscule. More importantly, if you think it is alright to snatch away any right of Mexican Americans/anyone else for a little less porous border, perhaps you will do well to consider Ben Franklin’s opinion: People who trade liberty for security deserve neither.
And correct me if I am wrong, but dont you need to carry a document that proves your legality in the US? If Pravin is from CA, the DL won’t suffice—since they don’t check immigration status to issue one. Same goes for most states.
I’m just wondering how many of the people leaving comments here, have read the whole law?
Suki! Thank goodness you’re here. Please: tell us the secrets within the whole, unadulterated law. Surely some little subsection of the law will undo all the evil bits. Enlighten us before it is too late!
(Less snarkily: I am happy to be corrected if the law as written is more sane than the analysts have predicted. I suspect this kind of law has the potential for abuse regardless, but I would like to know if it’s somewhat better constructed than I thought.)
If Pravin is from CA, the DL won’t suffice—since they don’t check immigration status to issue one. Same goes for most states.
That is not true. The two states that issued me a DL did check immigration status (CA and PA) and issued me a license that was only valid for the duration of my visa. It should be fairly trivial, then, to see which DLs are issued to visa holders (will expire on the day their visa expires ie not on their birthday) and which ones to green card holders / citizens.
Not hard and I do carry it most of the time. But that is irrelevant. I reserve the right not to carry it ALL the time, especially when not driving.
Being stopped by a cop is a weird feeling. Especially these days, even the slightest smart alecky response could risk getting tasered.
Almost every state I know of has tightened their DL rules, and require the same documents you must submit with your I-9 – GC/US Passport OR Foreign passport+I-94-Notice of Action. That has been the law for years since 9/11. Before that the only difference was DLs for everybody ran through their birthday 4-6 years from issue depending upon hte state. After that DLs for non-LPRs/US Citizens are issued only for validity of immigration status. In case of LPRs although their green card validity is not equal to status validity, DLs may be issued only upto validity of Green Card.
A report from the Department of Justice about the situation in Arizona might help people understand why what seems like a draconian law was passed:
http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs22/22934/index.htm#Contents
Hi folks,
Been out all evening, but just a quick note before I head to bed: the two bills which Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, signed are linked at the top of the post just after the quotation. Here they are again:
Senate Bill 1070
House Bill 2162 (a modification of SB 1070 above)
Anything in caps is what that particular bill amends. DevP is correct to point out that the law only mentions that a law enforcement officer should recognize a valid Arizona driver license as evidence that an “alien” is not unlawfully present in the US.
So whether Pravin is carrying his license, or whether Aj’s friend had had his/her license when they were stopped, if they weren’t Arizona licenses, and if those licenses were the only IDs they had on them, my reading of the two bills says they could be screwed by this law.
NoFreeLunch,
I’m going to read through the two bills again in the morning, but from what I can recall, neither one of them strengthens already existing penalties against traffickers of drugs and/or humans (the penalty for which is greater than for only being here unlawfully).
Good night all, and thanks for your comments.
ID checks by themselves are not a problem if people can in fact get papers via legit government programs or through the good offices of votebanking politicians. How difficult is it to get ID in these states?
why are folks up in arms over this issue ? I dont get it. Is it such a big deal carrying ID with you. Dont you always carry a DL / wallet with you? Does a photocopy suffice ? or does it need to be original id ? No doubt that this is being used to harass illegal mexicans out of the country. As is well known I dont have any sympathy for queue jumpers. I would be one of those who is likely to be harassed but it is price I am happy to pay. Probably worth it as every illegal immigrant devalues a legal one.
Regarding Vivek’s story about getting pulled over and the cop asking the 2 brown folks to step out, leaving the white guy in the back seat : Is is not possible that the cop was trying to protect himself by preventing the two of you in front from using the car as a weapon? It would have taken considerable effort by Brian to do the same from his position, without getting noticed.
I was pulled over recently for doing a illegal left turn and was asked to step out of the car. Was it because I was brown? I stepped out, explained how I was lost and did not notice the no turn sign, was very apologetic and was let go without even a warning.
Every time I have to leave a comment here, I have to type in “brown” for the captcha thingie (seriously, 3rd time in a row!!). Is it because I am brown 😉 ?
The state has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants. But contrary to myth, they have not brought an epidemic of murder and mayhem with them. Surprise of surprises, the state has gotten safer. Over the last decade, the violent crime rate has dropped by 19 percent, while property crime is down by 20 percent. Crime has also declined in the rest of the country, but not as fast as in Arizona. Babeu’s claim about police killings came as news to me. When I called his office to get a list of victims, I learned there has been only one since the beginning of 2008—deeply regrettable, but not exactly a trend. Truth is, illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native Americans. Most come here to work, and in their desire to stay, they are generally afraid to do anything that might draw the attention of armed people wearing badges. El Paso, Texas, is next door to the exceptionally violent Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and easily accessible to illegal entry. Yet it is one of the safest cities in the United States. In 2007, scholars Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing investigated the issue for the Immigration Policy Center and concluded that “if immigrants suddenly disappeared and the country became immigrant-free (and illegal-immigrant free), crime rates would likely increase.”
Steve Chapman | April 22, 2010, Reason magazine
This bill isn’t about crime or undocumented immigration, not when 30% of Arizona is Hispanic and almost 20% of the state’s Hispanics are US born. It is a naked attempt at hegemony by Scottsdale and Glendale over Saguaro and Tucson. This resentment has been brewing for years, piloted by welfare kings/queens (I mean carpet bagging snow birds early baby boomer retirees) who have wrecked Arizona with their obscene golf courses and retirement communities, uninsulated air-conditioned mansions, olympic sized swimming pools – stripped its resources bare, and are bent upon changing the face of the state erasing its heritage.
Vivek being a Tucsonista you should read William Hartmann’s Cities of Gold: A Novel of the Ancient and Modern Southwest and weep as did I. And so did my sister who lived in Arizona for many years and raised a family.
I’m just boycotting the state..very mature..I know:)
Thats weird. It makes me type in “handsome,” though a few times it had “great abs.”