SB1070 Update: Runner up for best line to date

by David Safier

I just gave Robert Robb the award (below) for the best line, post-Bolton ruling on SB1070. But I have to give E.J. Montini a close runner up in that category. And if I changed the category to "Most insightful line, post-Bolton ruling on SB1070," E.J. would be the winner, hands down.

The law was never about border security or immigration. It was about changing our perceptions and shifting blame for our economic collapse from politicians to illegal immigrants.

Politicians like state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who sponsored SB 1070, have altered the way people think about those who cross the border illegally. Such people are no longer given the benefit of the doubt for being peaceful or hardworking, but in the eyes of many – including those who once believed differently – they are common (or worse) criminals.

It's obvious SB1070 is more about politics than stopping illegal immigration. But Montini takes it a step further. Even anti-SB1070 folks don't talk much about the more benign, positive aspects of illegal immigration, or the fact that most of them are hard working and law abiding once they're here. Most politicians who express concern about the law have been trapped into the "illegal immigration is awful but this isn't the way to control it" mode.

Here's more from the column, which deserves a read:

What Pearce and Gov. Jan Brewer and Sen. John McCain and others have discovered recently is that if you wildly exaggerate those problems, you not only demonize an entire ethnic group, but you win votes.

Even better, you cause people to forget that you were in office when spending was out of control and the economic collapse was on the horizon.

Instead of accepting responsibility for not recognizing the situation and economizing in a way that would have abated our financial flameout, you point the finger at a convenient scapegoat like illegal immigrants. Or as immigration lawyer Kevin Gibbons puts it, you blame "the state's red ink on the state's brown ilk."

And it's working.