Mexico warns citizens over new Arizona immigration law
Mexico has urged its nationals to carry proper documentation with them to Arizona in response to a tough new immigration law in the US state.
In a travel alert, the foreign ministry says there will be a "negative political environment" for Mexican visitors and migrants.
The law, signed into law last week, requires Arizona police to question people on their immigration status.
The Mexican government has condemned the legislation as "discriminatory".
The law is due to come into effect in 90 days despite strong criticism from President Barack Obama and protests.
'Harassed'
The alert recommends Mexicans travelling to Arizona to ensure they "act with prudence and respect local laws".
"As long as no clear criteria are defined for when, where and who the authorities will inspect, it must be assumed that every Mexican citizen may be harassed and questioned without further cause at any time," it reads.
It also reminds citizens that they are protected by international human rights laws.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has warned that relations with Arizona would suffer and that his country would use all means at its disposal to defend its people.
Under the new rules, those unable to show that they are legally allowed in the US could be given six-month jail sentences and fined $2,500 (about £1,600).
The law was signed by Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, who said it "protects every American citizen".
Supporters say not enough is being done at a national level to address the problem of immigrants and drugs crossing the border from Mexico to the US.
The state is home to an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants.
Mr Calderon is due to discuss the issue with Mr Obama in Washington next month.
Arizona is enhancing its already hard-line stance against illegal immigration with a new law that makes the state the toughest in the nation for illegal immigrants. But will the measure withstand legal challenges from civil libertarians who claim it's unconstitutional?
Washington is talking once again about tackling illegal immigration, though Democrats and Republican have very different ideas on what to do. Some states now are looking to rush into that void. Arizona's legislature has passed what is widely believed to be the strictest anti-illegal immigration law in the nation. NPR's Ted Robbins has the details.
TED ROBBINS: Let's call it the latest in Arizona's zero tolerance campaign against illegal immigration. Republican state representative Carl Seel is one of the new law's sponsors.
State Representative CARL SEEL (Republican, Arizona): We want to make the environment inhospitable for fraud, human traffickers and drug dealers.
ROBBINS: Compared with most states, Arizona's already inhospitable. It's a crime, for instance, for employers to knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The new law goes much further. Now, Arizona police and sheriff's deputies will have to question the legal status of anyone they stop if there's a reasonable suspicion that they're an illegal immigrant.
State Rep. SEEL: There are cities like Phoenix and Tucson that have police policies that actually tell the police officers, when you encounter an illegal alien in the routine course of your business - routine traffic stops, for example - that you are not to arrest them. You're just to let them go.
ROBBINS: Not anymore. Essentially, under the law everyone must have I.D. proving resident status or citizenship. Officers can use race as a factor in determining whether to question someone, though it can't be the only factor. Another section of the law deals with day labor. Illegal immigrants can now be arrested for soliciting work.
And a third portion of the law makes it a state crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants, or even to be in the state illegally. That's already a federal crime, but Representative Seel says it's not being adequately enforced.
State Rep. SEEL: And when we perpetually allow drug dealers and human traffickers to gallivant across our border and use deadly force against our law enforcement, we have to do something about it.
ROBBINS: Support for the new law got a boost after the murder last month of an Arizona rancher, presumably by a Mexican drug smuggler, 20 miles in from the border. Still, some lawmakers opposed it, along with virtually every part of the immigrant rights community.
Jennifer Allen heads the Border Action Network. She says the law is mean-spirited, unnecessary and unconstitutional.
Ms. JENNIFER ALLEN (Director, Border Action Network): This bill is a fundamental - it's an enormous affront on the basic rights and dignity that every person has in the state of Arizona, in the United States, and around the world.
ROBBINS: There is no consensus on what the financial impact will be. Supporters say the new law will save Arizona money by cutting back on social services and education for illegal immigrants. Opponents say it will cost government far more than it saves.
Ms. ALLEN: It will, in fact, result in tens of millions of dollars of additional costs every single year for local law enforcement, for training, for the court system, for the jails. It will require bringing on new public defenders, new prosecutors.
ROBBINS: Jennifer Allen agrees that the new law will make Arizona inhospitable to immigrants - just another step in an obvious plan.
Ms. ALLEN: Tire people. Hit them left, hit them right, from in the front and from the back until people are literally exhausted, and run out of the state and run out of the country.
ROBBINS: Ten other states are reportedly looking at similar laws. First, though, the new Arizona law will have to survive a number of expected court challenges over its constitutionality.
An anti-immigration law condemned as a licence for racial profiling is expected to come into force in Arizona within the next 48 hours. The law would be the first in the US to give police the power to stop citizens and demand proof of legal residence in the US merely on suspicion of not carrying appropriate papers.
Arizona’s Republican Governor, under pressure from right-wing rivals for her job, has until Saturday afternoon to sign or veto the measure. The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, a leading champion of immigration reform, has denounced it as a mandate for “German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques” of snooping and betrayal.
Up to ten other states are said to be considering similar laws as pressure mounts on the Republican Right and along America’s southern border for state-based immigration crackdowns in the absence of federal immigration reform.
The Arizona Bill would make it a crime for legal immigrants not to carry their alien registration papers, and would allow police to arrest those unable to produce them — potentially upending the presumption of innocence underpinning US law and the principle that its enforcement should be colour-blind.
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“It basically puts racial profiling into law,” a spokeswoman for the Senate Democrats in the Arizona state assembly told The Times yesterday.
One of the measure’s Republican sponsors, Representative John Kavanagh, called it “a comprehensive immigration enforcement bill that addresses the concerns of our communities, constituents and colleagues ... gives our local police officers the tools they need to combat illegal immigration”.
The progress of the hugely controversial Bill through the state assembly has been closely watched throughout the country, and helped by a wave of anger over the murder of an Arizona rancher 20 miles from the Mexican border last month. Robert Krentz, 58, was gunned down on his own property by an unknown assailant whom police assume was an illegal immigrant involved in a drug-smuggling operation.
In a sign of the pressure on moderate conservatives to be seen to get tough on illegal immigration in an election year, Senator John McCain, once a champion of progressive immigration reform, has stunned former colleagues by endorsing the Bill. “The state of Arizona is acting and doing what it feels it needs to do in light of the fact that the federal government is not fulfilling its fundamental responsibility — to secure our borders,” he told Fox News as the measure was approved by the State Assembly on Monday.
The Bill also has the support of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, the senior law enforcement official in the Phoenix area, who has gloried for decades in the unofficial title of “America’s toughest cop”. Mr Arpaio has courted sanction by federal authorities for years by encouraging his deputies to stop those they suspect of being illegal immigrants and demand to see their papers.
Arizona has the highest per capita population of undocumented aliens, with 460,000 at the
latest estimate. Cardinal Mahoney has called the new Bill “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigrant law”.
The Arizona state assembly has invited further controversy by granting initial approval to a Bill that would require President Obama to submit his birth certificate before having his name entered on ballot papers for the 2012 presidential election.
Accusations that Mr Obama was not born in the US and is therefore not eligible for the Presidency have lingered in the blogosphere since his candidacy gained national traction in 2007. As a matter of record, he was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii where his birth certificate is on file. His campaign has released a certified scanned copy of the certificate but some 40 per cent of Americans remain doubtful or unsure where he was born, according to polls.
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