Media Con­sor­tium

After orches­trat­ing a divi­sive national cam­paign to deny cit­i­zen­ship to the U.S.-born chil­dren of undoc­u­mented immi­grants, Ari­zona leg­is­la­tors watched their own anti-birthright cit­i­zen­ship bill floun­der in the state Sen­ate this week.

Col­or­Lines’ Jami­lah King reports that Sen­ate bill 1309—introduced with con­sid­er­able fan­fare only two weeks ago—met sig­nif­i­cant oppo­si­tion dur­ing its first Sen­ate hear­ing on Mon­day and was sub­se­quently with­drawn by one of its chief spon­sors, state Sen. Ron Gould ®. The swift defeat comes as a sur­prise to both sup­port­ers and oppo­nents of the bill, as Arizona’s Republican-controlled leg­is­la­ture has man­aged to pass a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sial mea­sures in the last year, with­out much difficulty.

What’s more, Ari­zona legislators—headed by Sen­ate pres­i­dent Rus­sell Pearce ®—have brazenly led the charge against birthright cit­i­zen­ship, with leg­is­la­tion being intro­duced at both state and fed­eral lev­els. So while 14 states are attempt­ing to restrict cit­i­zen­ship and force a Supreme Court review of the 14^th Amend­ment, accord­ing to Doug Ram­sey at the Pub­lic News Ser­vice, Ari­zona had appeared to be the most likely to pass the con­tro­ver­sial measure.

The effort isn’t com­pletely dead, how­ever. An iden­ti­cal mea­sure intro­duced into the state House may still stand a chance, as it has yet to reach com­mit­tee. Mean­while, Gould will keep try­ing to secure votes for SB 1309, while Pearce con­sid­ers reas­sign­ing the bill to a friend­lier com­mit­tee. Nev­er­the­less, the measure’s easy defeat in a state noto­ri­ous for embrac­ing hard line immi­gra­tion laws may bode ill for sim­i­lar efforts elsewhere.

SB 1070 copy­cat mea­sures pro­voke divi­sion in Col­orado, New Mex­ico and Florida

Indeed, attempts to pass Arizona-style immi­gra­tion laws in other states have been repeat­edly slowed by myr­iad leg­isla­tive road­blocks and grow­ing divi­sion between and within polit­i­cal parties.

In Col­orado, pro­po­nents of an immi­gra­tion law mod­eled after Arizona’s SB 1070 say they are plan­ning to with­draw the mea­sure after weeks of delib­er­a­tion and inde­ci­sion, reports Scot Kers­gaard at the Col­orado Inde­pen­dent. Just days after Ari­zona law­mak­ers with­drew their vaunted birthright cit­i­zen­ship bill, Col­orado Rep. Randy Baum­gard­ner ® told reporters that legislators—who had hoped to avoid the kinds of costly legal chal­lenges pro­voked by SB 1070— had failed to resolve the “pos­si­bly uncon­sti­tu­tional” ele­ments of the measure.

In New Mex­ico, an exec­u­tive order issued by Gov­er­nor Susanna Mar­tinez ® that requires police to inves­ti­gate the immi­gra­tion sta­tuses of all crim­i­nal sus­pects has sparked the ire of state Democ­rats.The Amer­i­can Independent’s Matthew Reich­bach reports that Demo­c­ra­tic leg­is­la­tors held a press con­fer­ence last week denounc­ing the order, which is sim­i­lar to Arizona’s SB 1070 and could lead to racial profiling.

While Mar­tinez was care­ful to pro­hibit law enforce­ment from ask­ing vic­tims and wit­nesses about their immi­gra­tion sta­tuses (a prac­tice that has, in Ari­zona, dis­cour­aged immi­grant vic­tims and wit­nesses from report­ing vio­lent crimes), Rep. Anto­nio Maes­tas (D) voiced con­cerns that the order could inhibit domes­tic vio­lence vic­tims from com­ing for­ward. Often, law enforce­ment respond­ing to domes­tic dis­putes regard both par­ties as sus­pect (even fin­ger­print­ing and tak­ing both into cus­tody) until full state­ments can be taken and assessed—at which time, the vic­tim is released.

But, as I’ve writ­ten before, in such cases vic­tims run the risk of being ques­tioned about their immi­gra­tion sta­tus and turned over to Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE). In response, Demo­c­ra­tic law­mak­ers are push­ing sev­eral bills that would over­turn the governor’s order.

Mean­while, in Florida, Repub­li­cans are divided over the prospect of intro­duc­ing their own SB 1070 copy­cat bill, reports Elena Shore at New Amer­ica Media/La Prensa, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Mike Hari­dopo­los ® argues that such a mea­sure would be bad for the state, but newly elected Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Rick Scott (who cam­paigned on an anti-immigration plat­form) main­tains that “police should have the abil­ity to ask peo­ple for immi­gra­tion papers while they go about their jobs, even dur­ing rou­tine stops.”

Mean­while, an SB 1070-type bill that was intro­duced last ses­sion may get a makeover as its author, Rep. William Sny­der ®, tries to soften its pro­vi­sions in advance of the upcom­ing leg­isla­tive ses­sion, which opens March 8.

This post fea­tures links to the best inde­pen­dent, pro­gres­sive report­ing about immi­gra­tion by mem­bersof The Media Con­sor­tium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Dias­pora for a com­plete list of arti­cles on immi­gra­tion issues, or fol­low us on Twit­ter. And for the best pro­gres­sive report­ing on crit­i­cal econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Con­sor­tium, a net­work of lead­ing inde­pen­dent media outlets.

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