By DEXTER DUGGAN
“ We were put on this Earth to bear each other up, recognizing our interdependence on one another, but most of all our unity as children of God.” — From the Spring 2010 newsletter of a Phoenix prolife pregnancy center about serving moms and babies.
+ + + PHOENIX — Almost two years ago a woman driving just south of Tucson, southern Arizona’s largest city, pointed to the surrounding desert bristling with prickly plants and pricklier sociology. “ This is Mexico,” she said.
The geographic fact was that Mexico was still nearly an hour’s drive farther south of her sportutility vehicle. The graphic reality was that massive illegal immigration into Arizona was dissolving and reordering border- area territory, a fact perhaps not well understood in eastern media citadels where notions like “ the United States” may seem quaint.
When Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 into law shortly after lunch on April 23, the moderate conservative chief executive made the same point, that the boundary line is vanishing beneath tides of criminality and corruption: “ We cannot delay while the destruction happening south of our international border creeps its way north.”
Brewer said she approved Arizona’s new measure against illegal immigration because “[ w] e cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels. We cannot stand idly by as drop houses, kidnappings, and violence compromise our quality of life.”
Nor was the law some radical imposition on the system. “Despite erroneous and misleading statements suggesting otherwise, the new state misdemeanor crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document is adopted, verbatim, from the same offense found in federal statute,” Brewer said in her signing statement.
Because state government stood up for civil order, Arizona quickly became a curse word in media around the globe.
At a time when the U. S. Catholic Church seems identified as a defender and promoter of massive illegal immigration, it’s a useful reminder that neither Pope Benedict XVI nor the Vatican agrees withthis stand.
Like the mission of pro- life pregnancy centers here and elsewhere that serve both legal and illegal residents, charity and compassion are foundation stones of a moral life. But even a charity dining hall says people must get in line and follow rules. Elbowing others aside while demanding a fifth serving is neither blessed nor benevolent.
Asked about the belief that the Church says all illegal aliens must be welcomed into the U. S., John Kavanagh, a conservative Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives and practicing Catholic, told The Wanderer,
“ It only makes sense if you don’t mind the lifeboat sinking.”
The best solution is for the U. S. to “ stay strong” while helping other countries with foreign assistance and reforming their corrupt governments, Kavanagh said during an April 18 interview.
“You’re not helping other countries by accepting their best and brightest, and leaving other countries to flounder” without reform, said Kavanagh, who supports Arizona’s new immigration law.
“ By accepting and legalizing the illegal immigrant . . . we are accepting criminal line- jumpers at the expense” of others “ who are patiently waiting their turn in their home countries” to come to the U. S., said Kavanagh, who retired as a detective sergeant of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after 20 years then moved to Arizona in 1993.
Another local Republican politician and Catholic, conservative Sam Crump, toldThe Wanderer in an April 27 interview that although the Church provides “ compassionate humanitarian aid,” members of government “ have a duty to make laws, to enforce laws, and to protect our nation and its citizens.”
Crump, a member of the Knights of Columbus, was a cosponsor of SB 1070 before he resigned from the Arizona House in February to run in the GOP primary this August for the state’s Third Congressional District seat.
“ Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the U. S. could assist Mexico in developing itself internally,” Crump asked, although he noted Mexico’s “ being in the middle of chaos” now with drug wars.
“ They have fabulous natural resources there” as well as people with “a reputation for a tremendous work ethic” who probably don’t prefer to leave their country for employment, said Crump, who had been an Army captain in the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps.
“ I regret and resent that this [ new law] gets twisted around as racist, bigoted, anti-immigrant. . . . The fabric of our country is made richer by immigrants,” said Crump, who also cited people’s legitimate concern about terrorists entering the U. S.
Soon after Brewer acted, a twenty- something Hispanic conservative Republican state legislator went on the Phoenix- based newstalk KFYI radio ( 550 AM) to declare his support for the new law.
Rep. Steve Montenegro, born in El Salvador and brought to the U. S. when he was three and- onehalf, declared, “ There’s a difference between immigration and illegal immigration.” A woman who identified herself as third- generation Hispanic phoned the station to say she and her family support Montenegro’s stand. The Wanderer was unable to arrange an interview with Montenegro after the signing.
The three bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference opposed SB 1070, as they do most legislation here against illegal immigration.
The web site of the Diocese of Phoenix carried the text of an April 19 letter signed by 12 religious leaders including the three bishops urging Brewer to veto the measure.
The bill actually would impede public safety, the letter said. In addition to illegal immigrants fearing they’d be deported if they came forward to report crimes to the police, it said, “ SB 1070 makes Arizona the first state in the nation to create its own crime for people who are merely present in the country without proper paperwork. The status of this new crime goes from a high misdemeanor for a first offense to a felony for a second offense.”
The religious leaders also wrote: “ Our concern is that this bill could make felons, not only out of dangerous criminals ( as is warranted), but also the many undocumented immigrants who have come to this country at a very young age and have no familiarity with any other country but the U. S. We are concerned for these children and for families that may have a mother and a father, one of whom is a citizen and the other of whom would now be considered a criminal.”
Rob DeFrancesco, a spokesman for the diocese, told The Wanderer
that as of April 26, there was no statement reacting to Brewer’s signing the measure.
The governor hadn’t telegraphed what she’d do about the bill. People were still wondering when she appeared at 1: 30 p. m. on Friday, April 23, to announce her decision.
Some posters carried by protesters outside the Capitol building against the new law were inarguable. “ We are human.” “ We have rights.” No one would seriously claim the contrary. Other signs, though, were definitely debatable, like “ No borders.”
Hundreds of students cut classes at high schools to gather outside the Capitol, awaiting word. Many of them appeared Hispanic and at least some seemed to have been nurtured on ideas that Southwestern U. S. states rightfully belong to Mexico, and illegal immigrants justifiably are reclaiming them.
Frenzy in and by liberal news media after the signing showed that one of their most cherished causes was in danger. While many Americans dashed to online news sites to type their agreement with and admiration for Arizona’s law,the dominant spin in news coverage was that it must be stopped.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s inventing new “ rights” had been fine with these media, but a state legislature and governor reinforcing existing federal immigration requirements couldn’t be tolerated.
While reporters and editors have relished massive permissive abortion including partial- birth abortion, Arizona’s new law didn’t deserve to survive, they spun. The federal government’s passivity against tens of millions of illegal immigrants had been fine. Barack Obama had repeatedly ignored Brewer’s calls for troops on the border.
Not only was the national government under Obama and Janet Napolitano determined not to do its basic duty to protect Arizonans from invasion; Washington, D.C., didn’t want Arizonans to dare exercise their own self-defense. The situation had been no better under Republican predecessor George W. Bush.
After Obama criticized Arizona’s “ misguided” bill on April 23, syndicated columnist George Will replied, “ It is passing strange for federal officials, including the president, to accuse Arizona of irresponsibility while the federal government is refusing to fulfill its responsibility to control the nation’s borders. Such control is an essential attribute of national sovereignty.”
During Bush’s push in 2007 for “ comprehensive immigration reform,”
The Wall Street Journal
generally characterized opposition to his efforts as the reaction of “ nativists” and “ restrictionists,” but the newspaper seemed to have learned something since.
Shortly after prominent Southern Arizona rancher Rob Krentz was murdered as he worked his own land near the border on March 27, theJournal published an article by Leo W. Banks, who covers the border for the liberal alternative Tucson Weekly, an Arizona newspaper that nonetheless acknowledges the border chaos.
“ For years, Rob’s wife, Sue, has written pleading letters to politicians, media and others, detailing how the smuggling of drugs and people has become so bad that family members feared for their lives,” wrote Banks, mentioning widespread smuggling, theft and violence.
Banks wrote that border agents say 17% of the people they arrest in the Tucson Sector along the border have U. S. criminal records — not merely criminal records. They’re already been across the line enough to have made their mark with law enforcement here.
And Banks made the point that Brewer was to address later in April: the border is receding into Arizona.
If requests were to be honored to send National Guard troops into the area, Banks wrote, people in the border town of Douglas, Arizona, say “they need to be stationed along the border and told to stand their ground. It unnerves them that the Border Patrol often backs far off the line to patrol deep in American territory. This cedes ground to drug runners and gangs.”
Banks quoted a local veterinarian, “We’re chasing people 10 miles up, 40 miles up [into Arizona], and it’s after the fact.”
Noting the Obama administration cutting the Border Patrol budget, number of agents, and equipment, Banks concluded: “The disconnect between Washington’s priorities and the border lawlessness creates a sense of abandonment here, leaving many to feel that yes, God and guns are what they have left.”
The rosary was recited for murdered rancher Krentz in Douglas’s St. Luke’s Catholic Church, but turnout for the funeral the following day, April 10, was so large that the service was held in the town’s high school gym, with Bishop Gerald Kicanas of the Diocese of Tucson officiating. The area’s Sierra Vista Herald said that more than 1,200 people attended.
Borderland changes are notable, an Arizona woman toldThe Wanderer.
She said she didn’t want to be identified because of area violence. The town of Nogales, sitting astride the Arizona-Sonora border, reflects the transition, she said.
It used to be, she said, that “Mexico stopped at the border. Nogales,Sonora, was Mexican. Nogales, Arizona, was American, although mostly Mexican-Americans.
“Most of the old-timers and legal residents in Southern Arizona are connected to Sonora,” she said. “They have roots there and have family living there. It is different now. The newcomers seem to come from deeper in Mexico and often from Guatemala. They do not speak English and have very few of the social habits seen in the Sonoran immigrants. They are usually profoundly undereducated and are dependent on social services to a greater extent than the old-timers.”
Tucson, the county seat of Pima County, is suffering more crime as the Latino profile increases, she said. “South Tucson, which has an 80% Hispanic population, has a murder rate of 19 per 100,000. That crime rate is moving north and many people are leaving Tucson for the northern portion of Pima County. I guess it is pretty accurate to say that Mexico has taken over most of southern Arizona, [ up] through the Tucson city limits.”
Although Brewer received considerable praise online by readers reacting favorably to news of her signing, Rob Haney, chairman of the Phoenix-area Republican Party, toldThe Wanderer he wasn’t impressed.
“Brewer had to sign the bill because 70% of Arizona voters favored the bill and Brewer has been in a highly contested primary election,” he said. “The more interesting question is why did she wait five days to sign it? This delay allowed opposition from the pro-illegal immigration lobby to build to a crescendo of orchestrated rage in Arizona and the country and caused more expense to already budget- strapped police organizations. But the delay did allow for much more suspense and publicity for Brewer, and when she finally did sign it, she could expect a boost in her poll numbers.”
Asked how he would respond to those who say the new law offends Hispanics or Mexico, Haney, a longtime foe of Arizona Sen. John McCain, replied: “ This is the McCain legacy. We have seen all of this before in which those who support immigration law, the Constitution, respect for law, and the integrity of our voting system are called racists, Nazis, xenophobes, bigots, and against civil rights and justice for all.
“We saw it when we passed the [Arizona] requirement that an applicant had to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote,” Haney continued. “ We saw it when we passed employer sanctions and fought against sanctuary cities. We saw it when we fought against McCain’s amnesty plan and the attempt to gut our employer-sanctions law. I dare say it will offend those Hispanics who wish to undermine the political structure our Founders gave us. If we could adopt Mexico’s [strict] immigration laws as our own, maybe they wouldn’t be so offended?”
Wall Street Journal online columnist James Taranto on April 26 noted a media advantage that foes of the new law have: the media that devote little attention to their violence and lawbreaking always stand ready to speculate about the
potentialfor violence at perfectly peaceful tea- party gatherings that these media detest.
There reportedly were at least four arrests of foes of the law at the Arizona capitol as the governor signed it, with bottles being thrown at police, and a radio report of people with guns and knives in the area. Two days later, refried beans were used to smear swastikas on the capitol.
On a recent trip to the border, Brewer said that more than 1,000 illegals continue to cross daily, according to the Douglas Dispatch.
The evening before she signed the law, the Associated Press reported, Arizona deputies stopped an erratically driven truck near the border and found 67 illegals crammed inside.
Despite all this and far more, much national media, Obama and Los Angeles’ Roger Cardinal Mahony, among others, say it’s Arizona who’s being beastly.