New Arizona Immigration Law No Friend to Women

Besides the obvious, racist implications of the new Arizona immigration law SB1070, which requires certain members of the immigrant community to be prepared to prove their citizenship status at every turn, the law could be particularly harmful towards Latinas. Immigration policy experts appeared on NPR's Diane Rehm Show Tuesday to discuss the new law, and two of the three panelists wondered what kind of police contact, or lack thereof, the law will lead to for undocumented immigrant women.

Laura Meckler, who is a White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, wondered about the meaning of "lawful contact," a phrase that is thrown around a lot in regard to this law and is supposed to dictate the means that police officers can utilize to accuse someone of residing in Arizona illegally. "What is lawful, normal contact with the police?" Meckler asked. "For instance, one of the concerns is that if someone is reporting a crime or is a victim of a crime they may have some interaction with the police and that that would be the kind of situation where someone would be asked to show their documentation."

Angela Kelly, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, speculated about how this concern could play out for immigrant women or the female relatives of immigrants. "I worked with victims of domestic violence for years," Kelly said. "I can tell you that they will be very fearful to have any contact with the police if they are being abused or if they're children are being abused, if anyone in the family or in their neighborhood is undocumented."

I can imagine that immigrant and Latino communities alike already have an adversarial relationship with police authorities in Arizona, where the blatant racism and thoughtlessness of this bill are surely indicative of the climate of the state. Adding a new source of fear will only add insult to injury for women who seek basic protection from their abusers, and put them in further danger.

Some advocates of this law might not have made themselves aware of the fact that it doesn't matter whether the woman in question is herself an illegal resident. If she's hosting an undocumented immigrant, if her best friend is an undocumented immigrant, or if anyone that may be put in the line of law enforcement's sight is undocumented, these people may be powerful reasons for her to hesitate in contacting authorities or not make the call at all.

This is why, as our Criminal Justice blog pointed out, criminal investigators across the country have taken it upon themselves to deliberately ignore citizenship questions for this very reason. "The police exist to keep us safe and to solve crimes," Matt Kelley wrote. "That's hard to do when a whole community is afraid of you."

Photo credit: SashaW