They came from far away by the millions, bringing strange, sometimes offensive customs and values. They show no interest in Arizona's history or traditions, preferring to keep to themselves. Through their numbers and the way the state uses them for economic gain, they profaned the peerless beauty of the Sonoran Desert and destroyed the magic of the Salt River Valley. They caused billions in public costs that will linger for decades. While many are said to be hard-working, most are in the state for its government-subsidized goodies, and their numbers have included no small share of criminals, even kingpins seeking to extend their dangerous empires across the border. And it's the smaller things, too. As wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III would have it, they deliberately cause accidents on the freeways and otherwise drive like maniacs. I'm no bigot — some individuals are even personal friends — but I even find their accents grating, their clothing bizarre, the ever-growing accommodations we must make for them unfair.
I'm writing, of course, about the other great migration that destabilized my home state: That of the Midwesterners and Californians. We all have our biases. If mine had been acted upon, Arizona would have passed appropriate taxes and strong land-use protections to help mitigate and reduce this wave of destructive immigration. Instead, it has rolled out the nation's harshest law against illegal immigrants. A Legislature whose majority prides itself on disdain for learning and believes the facts have a leftist bias won't solve one of the most complex problems facing America, or any rich nation adjoining a poor one. But it can guarantee racial profiling and provide tools to further oppress the working poor. It has also made Arizona an international pariah, ground zero of crazy. How did we get here?
Arizona was once part of Mexico, and without the Gadsden Purchase the international border would be just south of Phoenix. For generations, people came and went at will between the state and Mexico. Mexican-American families predate the arrival of my kin in the 19th century. The economic and social destinies of the Arizona and Mexico were tightly intertwined (rent the movie Lone Star to understand the textures and ironies). The Anglo elites long exploited Mexican workers for the farms and groves of the Salt River Valley (including the Goldwater family's Goldmar), officially for a time through the Bracero Program. The American government implicitly allowed Mexico to use the states as a "safety valve" for lack of economic opportunity at home, in exchange for the authoritarian ruling party's anti-communism. Everything started to change in the 1980s.
Numbers matter, and before this time Arizona was lightly populated and the immigrant numbers relatively small. Since the 1980s, however, the size of the human migration has been vast and destabilizing. This disruption is on display in Maryvale and almost all of the cheaply built subdivisions of older Phoenix, Mesa, etc. (It was helped along by Phoenix's brutal destruction of the historic barrios.) The immigrants were drawn by Arizona's growth machine, where the union-busting economic elites preferred to use illegals on construction crews, in the tourism sector, etc. Not for nothing was Arizona tracking the national average in per-capita income and even showing improvement — until the 1980s. Construction crews that were once Anglo and Mexican-American were displaced by illegals. Mexico's population was exploding, young and desperate. The safety valve was needed more that ever after the implementation of NAFTA, which destroyed huge segments of Mexico's national economy, especially small-scale agriculture and manufacturing.
Arizona's employers relentlessly exploited the situation, gaining a workforce that lacked any rights and could be kept in fear of deportation. They easily made the transition from agriculture to "growth" with this workforce. It was constantly interchangeable: The next wave would be cheaper. So by the 1990s, the illegal immigrant wasn't taking away an Anglo's job — he was taking his cousin's job. The "Arizona model" spread nationwide. Arizonans got quite a bargain, with less expensive products and services than those that would be provided by citizens. But they also had an alien population, ranging anywhere from 400,000 to 1 million, in their midst. Children born were American citizens. As businessmen profited and taxes were cut, the public cost of the alien workforce became noticeable, especially in already underfunded schools and health care. Even many Mexican-Americans quietly resented the newcomers. But employers had a voracious appetite for illegal labor, so not surprisingly the state's conservative congressional delegation long kept hands off. And with a vast empty border and the "come as you are" attitude of Arizona elites, the state not surprisingly also became ground zero of human smuggling, gun running and drug distribution with all its lethal consequences.
Now the Anglo millions who don't give a rat's ass for Arizona beyond their golf courses, wide roads and tract houses are shocked, shocked!
The new law won't work. As I've written, it will take strapped law enforcement away from real crime-fighting and eliminate essential trust between the police and the immigrant community, which is the biggest target of crime. Employers, who get a free ride, will gain even more leverage to abuse these poor souls. And they aren't going anywhere, because if they did the state economy would collapse. The law may well be struck down. Meanwhile, real reform won't happen. This would especially focus on improving education and economic and social mobility for the children of these low-skilled, first generation immigrants who are here. It would also involve creating a high-quality state economy that pays decent wages, as well as reforming Mexico's economy and society to serve its citizens. As for the federal immigration reform that wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III once favored — forget about it. The "brown peril" is now too politically profitable for the right.
For in addition to serving the ambitions of the odious Pearce, Arpaio and others who have deformed Arizona conservatism, the law plays well. A reader wrote to say how much he supports it. He's a pharmacist. I hate to tell him, but there aren't many pharmacist wetbacks. Instead, he is a victim of the big heat that's been brought down on the American middle class for 30 years, often with their approval at the ballot box. Conservative policies weakened labor, created bad trade deals (signed on to by Bill Clinton, too) and used tax policy that encouraged the rich to outsource jobs and gamble with their historic levels of wealth rather than investing in the productive American economy. Those policies starve infrastructure and other job-creating public investments while fueling merger games that kill more jobs.
A secondary issue is legal immigration: How much is too much, and how much do employers exploit it in a world with a surplus of higher-skilled labor, from software engineers to pharmacists? Don't expect this to be discussed; it's a tricky balance because we want the world's talent, but also to provide jobs for American citizens. To the extent that "gub-ment" is the problem, it's that it has been bought by the corporate oligarchy. And yet watch Americans vote yet again against their economic interests this fall. The results will be predictable, and how will they vent their blame next?
In Arizona, the mix is particularly toxic, made so much worse by the failure to invest in human capital and otherwise prepare for the 21st century. So in addition to an underclass of immigrants and their children, there's the Anglo growth campesinos: the small contractors, call-center proles, mortgage boiler room stokers, garage door salesmen, Home Depot part-timers, etc. etc. — all losing ground and, conveniently for some, at each other's throats.
As you know, I don't use Nazi analogies lightly, but just as the Tea Party is proto-fascism right down to its SA militias, Arizona has enacted the start of American Nuremberg Laws. Sensible Americans will either rise up and vote, or God help us.
