New stage in the immigration crisis

What a joy it was to hear on Tuesday that the U.S. Dept. of Justice had filed a legal challenge to Arizona SB 1070. Now we wait for a preliminary injunction to keep the Brewer-Pearce law from taking effect on July 29.

The lawsuit is based on unconstitutionality, since immigration is the realm of the federal government. It is not about the racial profiling aspect of 1070, but five other lawsuits have been filed, and if the law somehow does take effect, the Justice Dept. will monitor its enforcement for racial profiling.

In the meantime, the crazy rhetoric is not slowing down. (I think it will slow somewhat once we get past the November elections.)

Sometimes the posturing is to be expected, for example, from the mouth of SB 1070's grandaddy, Sen. Russell Pearce, who clearly has links to neo-Nazis. And from Gov. Jan Brewer, who on June 15 made the most ridiculous statement of the year, claiming that most undocumented migrants are drug runners. But I think most folks did not expect the outright fear-mongering from Sen. John McCain, now an extraordinary flip-flopper who once had co-sponsored comprehensive immigration reform with Sen. Ted Kennedy. Lately McCain has been promoting himself as "America's last line of defense." (Give us a break, Senator!)

The message of the fear-mongers gets pounded in, day in and day out:

* They repeatedly conflate hard-working migrants with drug-running criminals. (Worst case mentioned above: Gov. Brewer.)

* They often claim that the border is wide open. But just in the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol, there are over 3,000 agents, and they are joined by backup agents from other Border Patrol sectors, county officers, federal rangers and National Guard troops.

" They claim that the flow of migrants is increasing. But the fact is that the number of undocumented people in Arizona has gone down. DHS estimates there was a drop from about 560,000 in Jan. 2008 to about 460,000 in Jan. 2009. From my first-hand observations, I believe the numbers have gone down at an even faster rate since then.

* They talk about growing violence. But violence all along the US side of the southern border has gone down in recent years, right to the present. At the same time, the number of undocumented criminals sent to prison in Arizona has decreased.

* They talk about the obvious mountain of drugs coming across the border. But they seldom if ever mention that the US war on drugs has been going on with near-zero success for 40 years (at the cost of many lives and $1 trillion.) Nor do you often hear them talking about the insatiable coast-to-coast hunger for drugs that drives the whole rotten business.

* They talk about the cost of migrants to schools and hospitals. But they don't talk about migrants'' immense contributions to the nation over decades. They seem content with the $1.7 billion spent each year on over 200 detention centers for migrants who wish they were working at their old jobs (many of which US citizens cannot or will not do.) They don't blink at the obscene profits being raked in by private prisons.

* And when do they ever talk about the family separation caused every day by deportations, or the gruesome deaths of migrants desperate for work who try to cross the desert in remote areas? More deaths along the Arizona-Mexico border have been documented so far this year than at this time last year--as of today, they number 153.

In the wake of the federal lawsuit, we need a lot more good news. We need humane, comprehensive immigration reform. Now.