President Barack Obama is calling for action to reform U.S. immigration policy

President Barack Obama is calling for action to reform U.S. immigration policy.   Mr. Obama says the U.S. immigration system is “broken and dangerous,” and the country’s borders are too vast for the problem to be solved only by building more fences.”In sum, the system is broken, and everybody knows it,” he said.  “Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special-interest wrangling, and to the pervasive sentiment in Washington that tackling such a thorny and emotional issue is inherently bad politics,” Mr. Obama added.Speaking at American University’s School of International Service, the president made his first major appeal for a comprehensive reform of the nation’s immigration policies.

He did not announce any new initiatives on the issue, but called overhauling the U.S. immigration system “a moral imperative.”White House officials say the president’s decision to speak about the issue was influenced by several factors, including the state of Arizona’s recent passage of a tough law against illegal immigrants.Mr. Obama said inaction at the federal level has led to what he considers a bad law.”Into this breach, states like Arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands.  Given the levels of frustration across the country, this is understandable.  But it is also ill-conceived,” he said.The new law has been met with protests around the country, although polls show that a majority of Americans questioned support it.The president said a comprehensive solution is needed for America’s immigration problem.  He sought to reassure those who want to get tough on illegal migrants that he does not support giving amnesty to people who are in the United States against the law.”Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship,” he said.  “And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”

Mr. Obama also reassured pro-immigrant groups he has no intention of trying to round up and deport those who are in the country illegally.”They know it is not possible.  Such an effort would be logistically impossible and wildly expensive.  Moreover, it would tear at the very fabric of this nation,” said the president.

Mr. Obama urged U.S. lawmakers to have the political courage to address an important issue.Despite the president’s appeal, members of Congress, many of whom are seeking re-election in November, are not likely to take up the controversial issue of immigration reform this year.(VOA)

Arizona lawmaker takes aim at automatic citizenship

PHOENIX  Emboldened by passage of the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigration, the Arizona politician who sponsored the measure now wants to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in this country to undocumented parents.Legal scholars laugh out loud at Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce’s proposal and warn that it would be blatantly unconstitutional, since the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.

But Pearce brushes aside such concerns. And given the charged political atmosphere in Arizona, and public anger over what many regard as a failure by the federal government to secure the border, some politicians think the idea has a chance of passage.”I think the time is right,” said state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Republican from suburban Phoenix who is chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. “Federal inaction is unacceptable, so the states have to start the process.”

Earlier this year, the Legislature set off a storm of protests around the country when it passed a law that directs police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. The law also makes it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant. The measure, which takes effect July 29 unless blocked in court, has inflamed the national debate over immigration and led to boycotts against the state.

An estimated 10.8 million illegal immigrants were living in the U.S. as of January 2009, according to the Homeland Security Department. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that as of 2008, there were 3.8 million illegal immigrants in this country whose children are U.S. citizens.

Pearce, who has yet to draft the legislation, proposes that the state of Arizona no longer issue birth certificates unless at least one parent can prove legal status. He contends that the practice of granting citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. encourages illegal immigrants to come to this country to give birth and secure full rights for their children.”We create the greatest inducement for breaking our laws,” he said.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” But Pearce argues that the amendment was meant to protect black people.”It’s been hijacked and abused,” he said. “There is no provision in the 14th Amendment for the declaration of citizenship to children born here to illegal aliens.”

John McGinnis, a conservative law professor at Northwestern University, said Pearce’s interpretation is “just completely wrong.” The “plain meaning” of the amendment is clear, he said.Senate candidate Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and darling of the tea party movement, made headlines last month after he told a Russian TV station that he favors denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

A similar bill was introduced at the federal level in 2009 by former Rep. Nathan Deal, a Georgia Republican, but it has gone nowhere.The Federation for American Immigration Reform, based in Washington, said Pearce’s idea would stop immigrants from traveling to the U.S. to give birth.

“Essentially we are talking about people who have absolutely no connection whatever with this country,” spokesman Ira Mehlman said. “The whole idea of citizenship means that you have some connection other than mere happenstance that you were born on U.S. soil.”Citizenship as a birthright is rare elsewhere in the world. Many countries require at least one parent to be a citizen or legal resident.

Adopting such a practice in the U.S. would be not only unconstitutional but also impractical and expensive, said Michele Waslin, a policy analyst with the pro-immigrant Immigration Policy Center in Washington.”Every single parent who has a child would have to go through this bureaucratic process of proving their own citizenship and therefore proving their child’s citizenship,” she said.

Araceli Viveros, 27, and her husband, Saul, 34, are illegal immigrants from the Mexican state of Guerrero. He has been in Phoenix for 20 years, she for 10, and their 2- and 9-year-old children are U.S. citizens.”I am so proud my children were born here. They can learn English and keep studying,” Viveros said in Spanish.

She said her husband has been working hard in Phoenix as a landscaper, and their children deserve to be citizens. The lawmaker’s proposal “is very bad,” she said. “It’s changing the Constitution, and some children won’t have the same rights as other children.”(AP)

Immigration rallies drawing crowds to Phoenix, boycott of Arizona

PHOENIX Organizers of a boycott of Arizona over the state’s new immigration law called for a one-day suspension Saturday as they bused in people from across the country for a rally at the state Capitol.Supporters plan a rally of their own at a Tempe baseball stadium, encouraging like-minded Americans to “buycott” Arizona by planning vacations in the state.

The dueling events are expected to draw thousands. In San Francisco, groups planned to protest at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game against the Giants Saturday evening.Critics of the law, set to take effect July 29, say it unfairly targets Hispanics and could lead to racial profiling. Its supporters say Arizona is trying to enforce immigration laws because the federal government has failed to do so.The law requires that police conducting traffic stops or questioning people about possible legal violations ask them about their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they’re in the country illegally. Reasonable suspicion is not defined.

“Arizona has become the testing ground for the most draconian and anti-immigrant legislation in the country,” said Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Some opponents of the law have encouraged people to cancel conventions in the state and avoid doing business with Arizona-based companies, hoping the economic pressure forces lawmakers to repeal the law.But Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the boycott committee of Hispanic civil rights group Somos America, said the boycott doesn’t apply to people coming to resist the law. Opponents said they had secured warehouse space for 5,000 people to sleep on cots instead of staying in hotels.

They’re calling on President Barack Obama to order immigration authorities to refuse to take custody of illegal immigrants turned over under Arizona’s law.Supporters of the law sought to counteract the economic damage of boycotts by bringing supporters into the state.

“Arizona, we feel, is America’s Alamo in the fight against illegal and dangerous entry into the United States,” said Gina Loudon of St. Louis, who is organizing the “buycott.” “Our border guards and all of Arizona law enforcement are the undermanned, under-gunned, taxed-to-the-limit front-line defenders trying to hold back the invasion.”The law also makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally or to impede traffic while hiring day laborers, regardless of the worker’s immigration status.(AP)

Dallas will join immigration law protests in Arizona

More than two dozen North Texas residents are headed for Arizona to join protests against that state’s new immigration law.The trip is organized by the Megamarch Committee, the same group that held a march through downtown Dallas on May 1 to promote an immigration reform bill that would legalize millions of undocumented workers and their families.Committee members said they want to show support and lend expertise to Latino activists in Arizona.

The Arizona law gives police broad powers to check the paperwork of anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. Critics say it will lead to racial profiling, while advocates say it’s necessary because the federal government has failed to stop illegal immigration.”We have a responsibility to continue our struggle for justice for everybody, so what threatens our brown brothers and sisters is also a concern for us,” said the Rev. Peter Johnson, who was boarding a charter bus in Oak Cliff early Thursday.

The North Texas bus riders, including both immigrants and American-born citizens, were to hook up with immigration-rights activists in El Paso and Las Cruces, N.M. Organizers say they will drive in a caravan to Nogales, Ariz., where a demonstration is scheduled Friday on the international bridge leading into Nogales, Mexico.

The group, which says all of its demonstrations will be peaceful, returns Sunday.”I’m first-generation but the rest of my family is from Mexico, so I want to help them,” said Raul Garcia, a Dallas painting contractor who carried a poster of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a revered religious symbol for Mexican Catholics, in a stylized pose reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty.

“We’re going over there to open their eyes, to let them know that we’re hard-working people just like them and that we deserve to be treated with dignity. The fact is that (immigrants) contribute a lot to our community.”

Daniela Sánchez, a 23-year-old recent graduate of the University of North Texas, said she hopes the national attention being drawn to Arizona will actually foster debate on a national immigration reform bill that includes legalization for undocumented immigrants.”I do believe we need some kind of immigration reform, but what (Arizona) has done is really unfair,” said the Plano resident. “We’re living in a society that is more diverse and multicultural than ever before and it’s time everyone in government acknowledges that.”

Feds may sue over Arizona immigration law

Washington Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday that the Justice Department was considering a federal lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. “We are considering all of our options. One possibility is filing a lawsuit,” Holder told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Possible grounds for the lawsuit would be whether the Arizona law could lead to civil rights violations, he said. The recently enacted Arizona law initially allowed police to ask anyone for proof of legal U.S. residency, based solely on a police officer’s suspicion that the person might be in the country illegally.

Arizona lawmakers soon amended the law so that officers could check a person’s status only if the person had been stopped or arrested for another reason. Critics say the law will lead to racial profiling, while supporters say it involves no racial profiling and is needed to crack down on increasing crime involving illegal immigrants. In Arizona , the city councils of Tucson and Flagstaff have decided to challenge the new immigration law in court. Holder told ABC’s “This Week” program that one concern about the Arizona law is that “you’ll end up in a situation where people are racially profiled, and that could lead to a wedge drawn between certain communities and law enforcement, which leads to the problem of people in those communities not willing to interact with people in law enforcement, not willing to share information, not willing to be witnesses where law enforcement needs them.”

“I think we could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done, and that is, I think, something that we have to try to avoid at all costs,” Holder added. Holder said comprehensive federal immigration reform is the best approach for the problem of illegal immigrants crossing U.S. borders. His stance echoed the approach favored by President Obama, who last week criticized the Arizona law and said he wants Congress to work on the issue this year.

Comprehensive immigration reform would include continuing government efforts to secure borders from illegal immigrants, as well as steps to crack down on businesses that employ them, Obama said at a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the White House. In addition, he said, those living illegally in the United States would have to pay a penalty and any taxes they owe, learn English and “make themselves right with the law” before starting the process of gaining U.S. citizenship.(CNN)

Chief Jack Harris criticizes immigration law

The police chief of Arizona’s largest city said on Friday the state’s controversial new crackdown on illegal immigrants would likely create more problems than it solved for local law enforcement.U.S.The remarks by Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris came as U.S. Senate Democrats vowed to push ahead with their uphill bid to pass legislation this year overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, saying the furor in Arizona has given them a lift despite a lack of support from Republicans.

Arizona’s week-old law calls for state and local police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the United States illegally. It has outraged Latinos, civil rights activists and organized labor.With polls showing the crackdown has broad public support in Arizona and nationwide, Harris said at a news conference he understood Americans’ frustration over illegal immigration.

But he criticized the new law as unlikely to solve problems caused by any of the estimated 10.8 million people who are in the United States illegally.”I don’t really believe that this law is going to do what the vast majority of Americans and Arizonans want, and that is to fix the immigration problem,” he said. “This law … adds new problems for local law enforcement.”

Harris said asking officers to determine immigration status during an investigation would interfere with their primary job and “instead tells us to become immigration officers and enforce routine immigration laws that I don’t believe we have the authority to enforce.”The chief said his force already had 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in its violent crime unit and that the law provided no additional enforcement tools.

“We have the tools that we need to enforce the laws in this state, to reduce property crime and reduce violent crime, to go after criminals that are responsible for human smuggling,” and other border-related crimes,” Harris said.Republican backers say the law is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is home to some 460,000 illegal immigrants and is a furiously trafficked corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.Phoenix, the state capital and a clearing house for unauthorized immigrants and drugs headed to cities across the United States, has recently averaged one drug-related kidnapping nearly every day.

POLICE DIVIDED

Revealing stark divisions among police in the Phoenix valley over immigration, an Arizona sheriff known for cracking down hard on undocumented migrants continued a two-day immigration and crime sweep in the west of the city on Friday afternoon.Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “crime suppression” drives have led to allegations of racial profiling. Deputies stopped and arrested at least 63 people for minor offenses who could not prove they were in Arizona legally since the operation began on Thursday.In Washington, Democrats have been accused of playing election-year politics by proposing a comprehensive immigration overhaul that critics insist has little chance of success.

The Senate draft proposal, quickly endorsed by President Barack Obama, includes calls for bolstered border security, new sanctions on U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants and high-tech identification cards that all U.S. workers would be required to carry.Senate Democrats appear to lack support from their Republican colleagues, however, and time is running out for legislative action before the November congressional election.

Republican Orrin Hatch, a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, said Americans did not trust Washington to solve the illegal immigration problem.”Law-abiding immigrants, ranchers, farmers and families have no confidence that Washington can stop the drug traffickers, gangs and even those low-enough to traffic human beings from illegally coming into the United States,” Hatch said late on Thursday.”Instead of fixing our broken borders, Washington politicos are playing a cynical game of introducing so-called immigration reform that I fear will turn into nothing more than amnesty,” Hatch said.

The uproar unleashed by the Arizona law has galvanized Latinos and is expected to translate into higher turnout at annual May Day rallies in more than 70 cities nationwide on Saturday.Organizers say the crowds on the streets, from Los Angeles to New York, could be the biggest since 2006, when hundreds of thousands of marchers urged former President George W. Bush to overhaul federal immigration laws.(Reuters)

Arizona's controversial immigration law will spark scores of people to protest in May 1 rallies nationwide and add urgency to pleas for federal immigration reform

CHICAGO Immigrant rights activists hope Arizona’s controversial immigration law will spark scores of people to protest in May 1 rallies nationwide and add urgency to pleas for federal immigration reform.Dozens of marches are planned for Saturday in cities across the country from Los Angeles to Dallas to New York.”What happened in Arizona proves that racism and anti-immigrant hysteria across the country still exists. We need to continue to fight,” said Lee Siu Hin, a coordinator with the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigrant Solidarity Network.

Activists believe opposition to Arizona’s new law  which requires authorities to question people about immigration status if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally could be the catalyst needed to draw record-breaking crowds similar to those four years ago.

That’s when more than a million across the country united to fight federal legislation considered anti-immigrant. Though the bill, which would have made being an illegal immigrant a felony, was unsuccessful, it triggered massive marches across the nation.Since then, the May 1 movement has fractured and attendance has dropped sharply as attempts to reform federal immigration policy fizzled. In 2006, nearly half a million people took to Chicago’s streets. Last year, fewer than 15,000 participated.But after the Arizona law was signed into law last week, immigration reform advocates have seen a flurry of activity.

Relying on online social networking, churches and ethnic media to mobilize, activists have called for a boycott of Arizona businesses and protested outside Arizona Diamondbacks baseball games. Earlier in the week, two dozen activists chanting “Illinois is not Arizona” were arrested for blocking traffic outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in suburban Chicago.While supporters say the law is necessary because of the federal government’s failure to secure the border and growing anxiety over crime related to illegal immigration, critics say it’s unconstitutional and encourages racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants or anyone thought to be an immigrant.

Activists fear that without federal legislation in place to address the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., other states will follow Arizona’s lead and pass similar legislation.”If Republicans and Democrats do not take care of this albatross around our necks, this will in fact be the undoing of many, many years of civil rights struggle in this country,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, where a downtown march is planned on Saturday. “I’m hoping that there is enough fire in people’s hearts and minds to urge them to be mobilized.”

But chances the federal government will step in this year seemed slim.President Barack Obama, who had once promised to tackle immigration reform in his first 100 days but has pushed back that timetable several times, said this week that Congress may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration after going through a tough legislative year.

Meanwhile, activists say problems with a broken immigration system continue to affect millions  raids on workplaces create mistrust of authorities and separate families with mixed immigration status, employers take advantage of immigrant labor and thousands of college students are left in limbo.That includes 19-year-old Patricio Gonzalez who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina at age five with his family on a tourist visa. It expired and his family wasn’t able to gain legal status.The Memphis teen said he had to drop out of college last fall because he wasn’t eligible for most student aid and couldn’t afford tuition.

“Do you know how difficult it is to see all your friends getting their education, and you’ve grown up with these people for years, they’re part of your family?” he said. “We’re creating lost generations — kids who grow up hopeless with no sense of betterment.”Activists aren’t alone in their opposition, a fact May 1 organizers hope will draw out even more people to rallies on Saturday which also is International Workers Day.California legislators have mulled canceling contracts with Arizona in protest. Denver Public Schools has banned work-related travel to Arizona. And several legal challenges, preventing the bill from going into effect this summer, are in the works.

Immigrant rights activists also say they’re stepping up other forms of action including more civil disobedience tactics. In Chicago, several college students plan to publicly “come out” as illegal immigrants on a downtown stage on Saturday.
“It’s time to come together and show that undocumenteds have dignity. They’re human,” said Douglas Interiano, a spokesman of Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance, which is helping plan Saturday’s march in Dallas.

He projected up to 100,000 could march in Texas with similar events planned in El Paso, Houston, Austin and San Juan. Organizers in California predicted up to 100,000 marching in downtown Los Angeles, too.”Given what’s happening in Arizona now it’s crucial for us to speak out and denounce what’s happening,” said Veronica Mendez, an organizer with the Workers Interfaith Network in Minneapolis, Minn., where there’s a Saturday rally. “We all have the same hopes and goals.”(AP)

Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Arizona because of the law

PHOENIX Many of the cars that once stopped in the Home Depot parking lot to pick up day laborers to hang drywall or do landscaping now just drive on by.Arizona’s sweeping immigration bill allows police to arrest illegal immigrant day laborers seeking work on the street or anyone trying to hire them. It won’t take effect until summer but it is already having an effect on the state’s underground economy.”Nobody wants to pick us up,” Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.

Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.”We want to drive day labor away,” says Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law’s sponsors.An estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years as it cracked down on illegal immigration and its economy was especially hard hit by the Great Recession. A Department of Homeland Security report on illegal immigrants estimates Arizona’s illegal immigrant population peaked in 2008 at 560,000, and a year later dipped to 460,000.The law’s supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents in a state with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Kavanagh says day labor is generally off the books, and that deprives the state of much-needed tax dollars. “We’ll never eliminate it, just like laws against street prostitution,” he says. “But we can greatly reduce the prevalence.”Day laborers do jobs including construction, landscaping and household work for cash paid under the table. Those jobs have been harder to find since the housing industry collapsed here several years ago.

Standing near potted trees and bushes for sale at a Home Depot in east Phoenix, Diaz, 35, says he may follow three families in his neighborhood who moved to New Mexico because of the law. He says a friend is finding plenty of work in Dallas.Diaz says he has too much to lose by staying – he’s supporting a wife and infant son back home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.”They depend on me to survive,” he says. “I’m not going to wait for police to come and arrest me.”Jose Armenta, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico’s western coast, is already planning to move to Utah within the next 20 days because of a combination of the economy and the new law.”A lot of people drive by,” he says as he watched nearby cars speeding past, “and they yell, ‘Hey, go back to Mexico!'”

Analysts say it’s too soon to tell what lasting effects the law will have on the state’s underground work force, which also includes baby sitters, maids and cooks.A study of immigrants in Arizona published in 2008 found that non-citizens, mostly in the country illegally, held an estimated 280,000 full-time jobs. The study by researcher Judith Gans at the University of Arizona examined 2004 data, finding that they contributed about 8 percent of the state’s economic output, or $29 billion.Losing hundreds of thousands of unskilled laborers wouldn’t hurt the state’s economy in the short term, but it could limit the economy’s ability to grow once it recovers, says Marshall Vest, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management.Legal workers who are willing to take any available job now will become more choosy if the unemployment rate falls back to low levels seen before the recession hit.

“That’s really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low-level) jobs,” Vest says. “I think economics provides the answer. If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage.”Some illegal immigrants, however, intended to stick around.Natalia Garcia, 35, from Mexico City, says she and her husband – a day laborer – will stay so their daughters – both born in the U.S. – can get a good education and learn English. The couple have been living in Arizona illegally for the last 10 years.”Mexico doesn’t have a lot of opportunities,” she says. “Here, we work honestly, and we have a better life.”Olga Sanchez, 32, from southern Mexico, lives in Phoenix illegally with her two brothers, who are 21 and 17. While the youngest boy is in high school, all three work and send money back home to their parents.

“This law is very bad for us,” says Sanchez, who gets about $250 a week cleaning three houses. “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.”She says the family is going to wait and see if the law takes effect and what the fallout will be before deciding whether to leave. The law is certain to be challenged in court; Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff already are considering lawsuits.”All I ask from God is a miracle for us to stay here and work,” she says.(AP)

Democrats want to border security before legalization

WASHINGTON Democratic senators writing an immigration bill are circulating details about their emerging proposal that would secure the border before illegal immigrants could become legal U.S. residents.

The plan would increase the number of border and immigration enforcement agents, and lays out security benchmarks. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the draft legislation on Wednesday that is being developed by Sens.

Harry Reid of Nevada, Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey.Arizona’s new strict immigration law has led to renewed demands for Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration bill.But in this election year, Republicans have been reluctant to consider an immigration bill.(AP)

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talk about the "Calls to boycott Arizona grow over new immigration law "

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that she had “deep concerns” with the law and said it could siphon resources needed to target criminals. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said he was considering “the possibility of a court challenge.”

“I think that that law is an unfortunate one,” Holder said. “It is, I fear, subject to potential abuse. And I’m very concerned about the wedge that it could draw between communities that law enforcement is supposed to serve and those of us in law enforcement.”The law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork. The legislation also bars people from soliciting work or hiring day laborers off the street.Gov. Jan Brewer cast the law in terms of public safety, saying, “We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels.” Brewer said she would order the state police training agency to formulate guidelines for law enforcement officers.

But critics said the law will result in racial profiling and discrimination.Calls for boycotts spread throughout California this week after the bill was signed by Brewer on Friday. The law is scheduled to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends this week.On Tuesday, seven members of the Los Angeles City Council signed a proposal for a boycott, calling for the city to “refrain from conducting business” or participating in conventions in Arizona. Councilman Ed Reyes, who coauthored the proposal with Councilwoman Janice Hahn, said he wants city officials to spend the next 90 days assessing the financial relationships that exist between various city departments and businesses based in Arizona.

“If Arizona companies are taking our money, I want to sever that,” he said.Hahn acknowledged that a boycott would be logistically complicated but said the city should not remain silent. “When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany,” she said.

A spokesman for City Controller Wendy Greuel identified at least 12 city contracts with Arizona companies that are worth an estimated $7.2 million.San Francisco supervisors introduced a similar resolution Tuesday, and Mayor Gavin Newsom imposed an immediate moratorium on city-related travel to Arizona, with limited exceptions. Newsom also announced the convening of a group to analyze how a boycott would affect city contracts and purchasing.

City Atty. Dennis Herrera said he hoped the city’s resolution would “be an impetus to others taking an aggressive stand in terms of scrutinizing the services they have with Arizona companies.”The leader of the California Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), called the law a “disgrace” and said the state also should consider a boycott. He sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asking for an inventory of Arizona businesses and government agencies with which California does business.

“The Arizona law is as unconscionable as it is unconstitutional, and the state of California should not be using taxpayer dollars to support such a policy,” Steinberg wrote.Already, several organizations have canceled planned conventions in Arizona. The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. announced that it is moving its fall convention, originally scheduled for Scottsdale in September.

“We just felt that given this new law signed by the governor that it would not be right for our association to meet and convene there and take on the issues of immigration in a state that passed such a misguided bill,” said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the group.Arizona was already reeling from a decline in tourism because of the recession, and the fallout from the law has taken hotel owners by surprise, said Debbie Johnson, president of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Assn.”Obviously our members are concerned,” Johnson said. “I thought there would be political issues. It has become so tourism-focused and that, to me, is the unfortunate side.”

Johnson said 200,000 people, many of them Latinos and legal immigrants, depend on a paycheck from the tourism industry. “They don’t want to lose their jobs,” she said.Barry Broome, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Development Council, compared the boycott resolutions to the aftermath of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant measure passed by California voters in 1994.”You didn’t see people in Arizona trying to leverage political gain from California’s issues,” he said.

Brewer said at a meeting in Tucson on Monday that she wasn’t worried about possible boycotts. “I believe it’s not going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think that it might,” she said.But Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who himself called for companies not to plan conventions in the state, said in an interview Tuesday that he expected the state to see declines in business and leisure travel, the trucking industry and retail shoppers from Mexico.

“There are political, legal and economic consequences that are going to hit the state,” said Grijalva, who has received death threats since speaking out against the law. “The disgust goes across state lines.”The concern about the law crossed international borders, with a travel warning posted by the Mexican government Tuesday. The post, on the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry website, urged Mexican citizens to be careful in Arizona and to expect harassment and questioning.