Arizona border businesses lose key Mexican clients / (Smash The Border)

Adalberto Lopez’ family-run musical instrument shop in the bustling Arizona border city of Nogales sells guitars and accordions to foot-stomping banda musicians and mariachis who cross up from Mexico to shop.But in mid-May, the music stopped in the store. Mexican customers who account for almost all its sales stayed away as part of a two-day boycott to repudiate Arizona’s tough new immigration law.”The street and my shop were empty,” said Lopez, of the “Day Without a Mexican” protest on May 14 and 15.The law may make life more difficult for border retailers already hobbled by the recession and long border crossing waits, and Arizona’s economy could take a hit from lost business.

But on a larger scale, experts believe the overall trade between the United States and Mexico, valued at around $1 billion a day, is unlikely to suffer from this latest wrinkle in the often strained U.S.-Mexico relations.Passed last month, the law requires state and local police to check the immigration status of those they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. Opponents on both sides of the border say it is a mandate for racial profiling.

Mexico President Felipe Calderon sharply criticized it during a visit to Washington last week. Standing beside U.S. President Barack Obama, Calderon said Mexican immigrants make a “significant contribution to the economy and society of the United States” but many face discrimination “as in Arizona.”

The measure has triggered legal challenges, convention cancellations, and, most recently, snubs by some of the 65,000 Mexicans who cross into the desert state each day to work, visit family and shop, spending $7.4 million, according to a recent University of Arizona study.”The people in Mexico have been fairly insulted by this legislation, as have most Latinos in the state of Arizona,” said Bruce Bracker, president of the Downtown Merchants Association in Nogales, who said local shops’ sales fell 40 percent to 60 percent as Mexicans stayed home during the boycott.

NO TRADE SLOWDOWN

Obama has spoken out against the law, which is backed by a majority of Americans.The United States, Mexico and Canada created the world’s largest free trade block with the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, although the U.S.-Mexico trade relationship has been jarred by job losses and charges of protectionism.Trade between the two neighbors is already ruffled by a trucking row. Mexico is waiting for the United States to let its trucks circulate again on U.S. roads, ending a spat that led it to slap duties on $2.4 billion in U.S. goods.

But analysts and customs brokers say the furor over the state law is unlikely to disrupt the $21 billion annual flow in goods over the Arizona-Mexico border, between clients scattered across northwest Mexico and the United States.”Once you work so hard to get a business enterprise up and operating, how much are you willing to reverse that based upon something that someone relatively remote from you does?” said Rick Van Schoik, director of the North American Center for Transborder Studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix.

“Life goes on regardless of the newsy political conversation that’s going on,” he added.Customs brokers in Nogales, meanwhile, who clear goods ranging from semi-conductor chips to fresh produce headed over the border by truck and freight train, said their clients were more concerned about the sputtering economic recovery than the migrant law, which is due to come into effect on July 29.

“The economy is one thing, but that’s an ongoing situation for everyone,” said Nogales customs broker Terry Shannon Jr.”But I have not had any dialogue with my clients at this point where they have called me up and point-blank (asked) ‘What do you think of the law? Where are we going with this?'”

‘ONE MORE OBSTACLE’

But in cross-border retail, where sentiment plays a role in shaping Mexican shoppers’ spending, the outlook is more vexed, business groups say.Informal Mexican boycotts in protest at the measure have taken hold in other cities bordering Arizona, among them San Luis Rio Colorado, south of Yuma, where some traders are opting to head to California and Nevada to buy appliances and cars.”They’re looking for other options,” said Juan Manuel Villarreal, president of the city’s chamber of commerce, adding that it is still too early to quantify the impact.Authorities in Nogales  the state’s principal trade gateway to Mexico  were unable to place a dollar value on the recent boycott by Mexican shoppers, whose spending accounts for nearly a quarter of all jobs in surrounding Santa Cruz County, and almost half of taxable sales.

But Olivia Ainza-Kramer, president of the Nogales-Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce said a backlash from the law piled pressure on local shops, restaurants and hotels already hurt by the recession and delays of up to two hours for customers crossing up from Mexico.”This is one more obstacle that’s getting in the way,” she said.(Reuters)

Arizona's immigration law Is Unconstitutional, Class Claims

PHOENIX Arizona’s controversial immigration law “will cause widespread racial profiling and will subject many persons of color … to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests,” according to a federal class action filed by the ACLU, the NAACP and other national civil rights groups.

The new law requires local police to enforce immigration laws and allows them to search vehicles without a warrant if an officer has a reasonable suspicion that the occupants don’t have immigration papers.

The groups want the court to block Arizona Senate Bill 1070, signed by Gov. Janice Brewer on April 23, from going into effect on July 28.They say the law is unconstitutional and “will create a legal regime regulating and restricting immigration and punishing those whom Arizona deems to be in violation of immigration laws.”

The law will also “cause widespread racial profiling and will subject many persons of color — including countless U.S. citizens, and non-citizens who have federal permission to remain in the United States — to unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests,” the groups claim.

The plaintiffs include the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Coalicíon De Derechos Humanos, the Muslim American Society, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International.

The Muslim American Society claims that its members, some of whom are immigrants, will be racially profiled “based on their foreign appearance and clothing, such as headscarves.” It also claims it won’t be able to educate the Muslim community in Arizona because its members “will be too afraid to attend meetings and organized activities and events.”
Jesus Cuauhtémoc Villa, a New Mexico resident and an Arizona State University anthropology student, claims that he may be subject to arrest because as a New Mexico resident he was not required to have proof of U.S. citizenship or immigration status to get a driver’s license. Villa claims he does not have a U.S. passport and does not want to risk losing his birth certificate by carrying it with him.

The plaintiffs say the Arizona immigration law “cannot be enforced without improperly singling out racial and ethnic minorities, including many U.S. citizens and persons authorized by the federal government to be present in the U.S., for stops, interrogations, arrests, and detentions.”

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio allegedly uses training materials stating that “the fact that an individual has no English skills or speaks English poorly is a factor indicating that an individual is not ‘lawfully present’ in the United States.”

The civil rights organizations demand a declaration that the Arizona immigration law is unconstitutional and an order blocking its enforcement. This is the fifth lawsuit filed against the Arizona immigration law in Federal Court.
The class is represented by Anne Lai of the ACLU Foundation of Arizona. (CN)

Az immigration law, New push for reform

WASHINGTON – As hopes for Republican support fade, Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday unveiled a push for comprehensive immigration reform aimed in part at stopping Arizona’s tough immigration-enforcement law from spreading to other states.”Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: The immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “We are offering this framework as an invitation to our Republican colleagues: Work with us to solve this problem that has plagued us for far too long.”But that invitation was met with skepticism by some key Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who this week abandoned efforts to work with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on a bipartisan bill. He was the only Republican working on the bill.

When it was clear that Graham was out, Democrats moved ahead with their own proposal, in part to respond to calls for action by Hispanic rights groups. Hispanic voters, who helped propel Barack Obama into the White House in 2008 after he pledged to make immigration reform a priority, make up an important part of Democrats’ political base.

But it is unclear whether the president will throw his weight behind the latest proposal, which would require that border security be significantly tightened before the government could offer a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.On Wednesday, Obama said Congress may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration during an election year in which Democrats are expected to lose seats in the House and Senate. But in a statement Thursday, Obama praised the proposal.

“The next critical step is to iron out the details of a bill,” he said. “We welcome that discussion, and my administration will play an active role in engaging partners on both sides of the aisle to work toward a bipartisan solution that is based on the fundamental concept of accountability that the American people expect and deserve.”

Rodolfo Espino, an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University, said the mixed messages could simply be the result of Obama not wanting to raise expectations too high.Espino warned that Congress’ window of opportunity to act on the hot-button topic is shrinking fast.”If you push this too close to primary- and general-election dates, I just don’t see something very good coming out with respect to a wise immigration-reform policy,” he said. “As you start pushing closer and closer to that Tuesday in November, you’re going to have some Democrats, particularly some of your moderate, vulnerable Democrats, who are going to start waffling a bit more.”

In a joint statement, Graham and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the immigration proposal is political gamesmanship. “It poisons the well for those of us who are working toward a more secure border and responsible, bipartisan reform of our immigration laws,” the statement said.

But Schumer said he is serious about reform and is continuing to talk with moderate Republican senators about signing onto the proposal, which would, among other things, bar states and municipalities from enacting their own Arizona-style rules and penalties related to immigration because those rules could “undermine federal policies.”The Arizona law, signed last week by Gov. Jan Brewer, makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police and other law-enforcement agents to check documents of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal.A new Gallup Poll indicates that 39 percent of Americans support the law, 30 percent oppose it and 31 percent have not heard of it or have no opinion. The telephone survey was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.Attorney General Eric Holder is reviewing the law’s constitutionality.

Tamar Jacoby, president of the pro-reform ImmigrationWorks USA, has warned that a politically motivated, all-Democratic push for immigration reform could dramatically set back efforts to enact a new comprehensive policy. But she said it’s too soon to write off the latest Senate proposal as a political gambit and remains cautiously optimistic.”There’s still a chance that this isn’t just playing politics with it,” said Jacoby, whose organization backs reform from a center-right, pro-business perspective. “There are signs that they are still making some effort into making it a bipartisan push. Of course, it also still has a chance to go off the rails, but we so far are still walking that fine line.”

Democrats acknowledged they cannot pass the bill without help from at least a handful of Republican senators. House Democratic leaders have said they are waiting for the Senate to take action first.”The urgency of immigration reform cannot be overstated,” Schumer said.