How Arizona’s Immigration Bill Sparks Racial Hate
Fed up with Washington’s feckless attempts to secure America’s southern border, Arizona lawmakers took matters into their own hands. In April, Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law an immigration bill that requires policemen, during law-enforcement action like traffic stops, to act on “reasonable suspicion” in order to verify a person’s immigration status.
“We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,” Brewer explained. “But decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”
Democrats and civil rights leaders were quick to denounce the bill, saying it would lead to widespread racial profiling.
Arizonans, meanwhile, are justifiably frustrated—and scared. Their state has been flooded with illegal aliens. In just the last three years alone, nearly 1 million aliens have been caught trying to sneak into Arizona. That amounts to about 900 per day.
Those who aren’t caught roam throughout Arizona—and the rest of America.
Why Arizonans Support the Bill
In Arizona, the estimated number of illegal immigrants is just under a half million. Embedded among them, of course, are who knows how many violent criminals, drug traffickers and human smugglers. There must be thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—judging by the massive quantities of illegal drugs seized by federal agents. Every day, on average, law enforcement officials confiscate 1.5 tons of marijuana alone.
And in the high-stakes game of drug trafficking, it’s no wonder illegal immigrants are becoming more aggressive and reckless in their behavior. Earlier this year, for example, Arizonans were outraged when a prominent rancher was murdered while patrolling his property 20 miles north of the Mexican border. Footprints at the crime scene revealed that the assailants fled to Mexico after the senseless attack.
Arizona’s capital city, Phoenix, also has the dubious distinction of being the kidnapping capital of North America. “The city has averaged about a kidnapping a day in recent years,” reported the Associated Press, “some resulting in torture and death. Victims’ legs have been burned with irons, their arms have been tied to the ceiling, their fingers broken with bricks” (April 27).
Small wonder that 70 percent of Arizonans support the new immigration bill. Law enforcement agencies have also voiced their support for the legislation.
But not the race baiters. They see the law’s passage as yet another opportunity to fan the flames of racial hatred and division.
A Sign of Maturity?
The mayor of Phoenix called the measure “racist and unjust.” Civil rights activist Al Sharpton said the bill effectively “sanctions” racial profiling.
Attorney General Eric Holder criticized the bill as “unfortunate,” saying it had “the possibility of leading to racial profiling.” He also said it might be “unconstitutional” and that it could trigger some kind of federal lawsuit to stop the legislation from going forward. And yet, during a congressional hearing on May 13, when asked by Rep. Ted Poe if he had even read the legislation, the nation’s top law enforcement official responded, “I have not had a chance to. I’ve glanced at it.”
“It’s 10 pages,” Poe snapped back. “I’ll give you my copy of it, if you would like.” Poe said the government ought to be enforcing the immigration laws that are passed in order to secure the border—not challenging them.
The day after the attorney general admitted he hadn’t read the law, Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state, told reporters he had been quite candid with Chinese officials—of all people—about America’s human rights violations. “Part of a mature relationship is that you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it,” Posner said at the conclusion of a two-day human rights summit between the U.S. and China on May 14.
A reporter then asked if the new Arizona law came up during the human rights summit, and if so, who brought it up?
Posner responded: “We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination” (emphasis mine throughout).
America’s leaders brought up the Arizona law early and often to the Chinese—the same people who lock down their own borders with oppressive force and murder their own citizens for opposing Beijing’s Communist rule.
At the same press conference with Michael Posner, America’s ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, said, “We’re talking about issues that are uncomfortable, quite frankly, but it is a sign of maturity that we can talk about specific cases.”
Groveling at the feet of dictators, confessing our supposed sins to the world, like the “troubling trend” in Arizona—this is now seen as a sign of maturity.
In fact, it is a shocking and shameful sign of immaturity—and it is prophesied in Isaiah 3:4.
Lighting the Fuse on a Race Bomb
Even President Obama hastily joined in on the chorus of criticism against the Arizona law. Within hours of Governor Brewer signing the bill, Obama scolded Arizona lawmakers for their “misguided” work. He said it threatens to undermine the “basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”
Should the law be enforced, President Obama envisioned life for Hispanic Americans to be something like this: “Now suddenly if you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed—that’s something that could potentially happen.”
Besides being factually incorrect on the specifics of the legislation, the president’s racially charged reaction failed to address another, more serious concern for Americans: being murdered or kidnapped by illegal drug-runners. The president’s gut-reaction comment, Kris Kobach wrote at the Washington Times, was true to form. “Just as with the Cambridge, Mass., arrest fiasco last year, he rushed to the microphone without knowing the facts in order to stir up and capitalize on accusations of racial profiling” (April 28).
That’s what much of the backlash against the Arizona law amounts to: stirring up racial discord. And as it happens, it comes at a time when hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants—an increasing number of them hardened criminals with sophisticated weaponry—are flowing across America’s porous borders every year. More than half of the illegal immigrants and drugs coming into America, by the way, travel through the Arizona-Mexico border.
Sixty-three percent of Americans nationally favor the Arizona law. But rather than do something about the mounting danger, America’s leadership is instead lighting the fuse of a much more explosive time bomb.
It’s an explosive mixture that will soon blow up in our faces.
When President Obama campaigned for office, he eloquently vowed not to use the race card and promised to bring the races together as president. Instead, the nation is becoming more divided by the day.
Two years ago, when then-Senator Obama was being lavished with praise for his efforts to heal the many race-relation breaches in America, my father warned that in the long run, it would only inflame more racism. “Poisonous race relations have everything to do with Bible prophecy,” he wrote on June 12, 2008. “This dangerous buildup within our society is a racist bomb that most of us will see explode in our faces!”
Regarding then-Senator Obama, my father wrote, “Many people believe that Mr. Obama is going to greatly improve race relations. But our racial problems are going to rapidly get much worse!”
Then, he added, “The race card is going to be played often for political gain!” So often, in fact, that even in the midst of a national emergency that has some Americans living in fear of being kidnapped, tortured or murdered by illegal aliens—and after Arizona passes a law that effectively makes it illegal to do something that has always been illegal—playing the race card and fanning the flames of hatred is what our leaders are concerned about most.
To learn more about the coming race wars in America, request our free booklet Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet.
