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When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 on April 23, she released a number of bats and vampires from inside that tomb because of loopy ways of thinking…

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When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 on April 23, she released a number of bats and vampires from inside that tomb because of loopy ways of thinking. Then again, maybe that was the intention all along.

The bill Brewer signed allows a dragnet where every person residing in the state is suspect of being unauthorized, not only in Arizona but the whole United States, with no right to equal treatment.

In a sense, it usurps federal authority and descends to a new low point of official intrusion, not seen perhaps since FDR rounded up and imprisoned Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The greatest danger is the havoc Arizona’s law intends and how political jargon trivializes the chaos that will visit on families with undocumented members — and the humiliation for the many (mostly Hispanics) who become a suspicious class.

Governor Brewer signed SB 1070, passed by the state legislature, following the March 27 shooting death in southeastern Arizona of rancher Rob Krentz after he had reported an “illegal alien” was at one of his ranch watering holes and was assisting him.

The good-natured Krentz was killed, authorities suspect, by an illegal border crosser. In 2002, Krentz and his family had reported that their home on the 35,000-acre spread, with 1,000 head of cattle, had been broken into. (One cattlemen’s group has suggested calling SB 1070 the “Rob Krentz Law.”)

Perhaps that was the straw that broke the camel’s back about keeping a well-regulated border. The law’s dragnet extends to the entire state — malls, gas stations, parks, and public places — not just in the border region. The law’s intention is about a lot more than securing the border.

Certainly, Arizona’s desert borderline has a history of deaths, mainly from exposure to the elements by border crossers (often women. sometimes children) on treks seeking a friend, a family member, a way to eek out a living, hardly ever for killing. The possible exception is now taken as the rule.

True, there are dangers out there from criminal human traffickers who exploit the innocent, hundred-year-old smuggling trails and networks, and the rampage of Mexican drug gangsters with U.S. cohorts engaged in supplying dope habits.

But the unnerving part of the state law is the unprecedented level of arbitrariness that will snare working people, wives and families because the police are allowed to stop whoever “looks” undocumented. One Arizona congressman claims he can tell who’s “illegal” by the shoes the person is wearing.

Oh, Jesus, spare me.

And where are the “family-values” Republicans and Democrats in all this. Unauthorized immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants to live in households with their spouses and 78% of their children are U.S. citizens. The law’s effect causes the break-up of mixed nationality families.

If the entire charade were not a cynical ploy, you would have expected Tea Party leaders and Libertarians to have amassed their members and joined the Latino families, civil rights advocates, elected officials and labor leaders who protested the law in Flagstaff April 25. It’s a law that has the look and feel and intent of the “police state” and government intrusion they fear and rally against.

Let’s get it straight. In practice, the Arizona law is about power and rage and retribution to satisfy a lust to punish those who have violated an administrative law (the functional equivalent of a misdemeanor) by pursuing them like hardened criminals.

It’s time to recalibrate and see this for what it is. One furious reader wrote to me: “There's a revolution coming whether Hispanics like it or not. It involves spending money we don't have, securing the border against ILLEGAL immigrants, coming to grips with militant Islam, removing politicians who don't agree with any of the above, removing programs that we can no longer afford, ie. census takers.”

Revolution? Hispanics? Illegal? Militant Islam? Removing politicians? Programs and census takers?

Let’s face it. Rage and retribution are leveraging public policy against logical, rational, cool thinking and solutions.

    [José de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. His 2009 digital book, sponsored by The Ford Foundation, is available free at www.DayNightLifeDeathHope.com. He is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003).  E-mail him at [email protected].]

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