How "Law and Order" Covers for Bigotry in the Immigration Debate

Central to the debate on immigration has been the appeal to law and order. But behind all the propaganda about respect for the law the core of the anti-immigration movement is about bigotry. Not surprisingly, the laws they appeal to are, in word and practice, unjust and barbaric.

We have heard that we should make a distinction between immigrants on the one hand and illegal aliens on the other. This is a way for the anti-immigration lobby to claim they are not racist or even xenophobic. They simply believe in obeying the law. But forget about the law for a moment. There is no reason why the millions of people who have moved here from Latin America in the last twenty years should be deported or criminalized. No one is being harmed by their presence, and there is strong evidence that we are all benefiting from this influx. So why is it so important to enforce these laws? After all, people violate genuinely serious laws all the time--citizens even. Driving while intoxicated, insider trading, corporate fraud, violating clean air laws are all much bigger problems. So why focus on immigration unless out of ignorance or hate? The truth is, just as with the the bigots of the past who disguised their hatred with the rhetoric of "law and order" when the law was apartheid in South Africa or "black codes" in the American South, the core of the anti-immigration movement today is about hate.

We can see this clearly with the conduct of the raids that have swept up thousands of people across the country in recent months ...

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