¿La luz al fin del tùnel? Or is a train about to hit us?

A part of me has always realized that much of the rancid rhetoric we hear these days whenever immigration, or ethnicity in general, is brought up is just the desperate pleas of an element of our society that can’t handle the inevitable when it comes to our society in the 21^st Century.

I honestly believe that much of the trash talk we hear and read these days will look so absurd to future generations. They will wonder how anyone among us could ever have taken it seriously.

WHICH IS WHY I got a kick out of a pair of stories I read Friday that relate to the political people in Arizona who led that state’s effort to impose measures meant to get their local law enforcement involved in the policing of federal immigration policies.

For it would seem that we’re already starting to see the signs that people are turning on the kind of cheap talk that got the nativist element of our society all stirred up last year, and even got some political people in states other than Arizona to think that somehow the Grand Canyon State was onto something significant.

Yet the Washington Post reported how many of the 20-plus states that have talked of passing “Arizona-like” laws are now finding that they’re either going to have to tone down the rhetoric considerably – or else incur significant financial obligations if local police departments are seriously expected to do anything with immigration, other than profile people of a certain skin complexion.

That, of course, would cause so many problems that even many law enforcement types in these states are letting their legislators know they’d rather not be bothered.

IT’S NOT LIKE it is a shirking of their responsibilities. Local police departments already have enough duties to deal with, and many are swamped to the point where the last thing they need is to have to cope with immigration issues just because their state legislators want to play national politics this spring and demagogue this issue to death.

In short, reality has impacted the states that were planning to copy Arizona, which would have been mocos blown in the face of the masses in our society who had enough sense not to get all worked up over the rhetoric tied to immigration reform.

For me, this issue has been theoretical. My home city is one that designates itself a “Sanctuary City,” which restricts local police from doing anything to get involved in immigration policy. Nearby Indiana is caught up in this nonsense-talk, but my home state has officials who promised to do nothing along the lines of Arizona – and they all managed to get themselves re-elected last year, the year that the ideologues fantasize about as being the beginning of their “Conquest of America!”

Actually, when you phrase it that way, it sounds so ridiculous that I can’t help but laugh at anyone who was ever delusional to believe any of it.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE the whole nativist rant is so last year. And last year has been over for 30 days now. It’s time to move forward. And forward, in this case, includes an acknowledgement that anyone who dreams of mass deportation is being ridiculous.

It’s not just the other states. Even Arizona is showing signs of second thoughts – or at least a willingness by some people to say publicly that their legislative officials forgot to take their medication last year.



PEARCE: A recall over immigration stance?

Somos Republicanos, the Arizona-based group trying to get more Latinos into the GOP, is going so far as to try to organize a recall election against state Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa.

Pearce has sponsored, endorsed or generally spoken out vehemently in favor of many measures that are blatantly hostile toward those people not like himself – or more truthfully, those who are much like the people who already lived in Arizona when his ancestors allegedly settled the state in the 1860s.

THE YUMA SUN newspaper reported that the group saw his support of altering the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution (the one about birthright citizenship) as the final straw. They want him out.

Now I’ll agree their attempt at a recall is a longshot (they have four months to get 7,756 signatures on petitions to force a special election, and all the signatures have to come from registered voters living in Pearce’s legislative district). I won’t be surprised if nothing comes of it.

But if we really had the momentum going in the direction the nativists want to take our society, I’d think that a group like Somos Republicanos (which often is more concerned with picking at Democrats and their neglect of Latinos rather than looking at Republicans and their abuse) would not even be willing to make the effort.

They’d want to keep quiet.

INSTEAD, THEY’RE WILLING to rock the boat/stir the pot/whatever euphemism you prefer. Because they know there will be an element out there willing to back them.

Which is why I really don’t think the “light” is a freight train coming on to plow us under.

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