It’s been nearly one month since Arizona passed law SB1720 into procession, effectively aiding the discrimination of all migrants in the state. The law may purport to stem the flow of “illegal” immigrants across the border, but such heightened security tactics don’t tactfully take care of any such “stem” or “flow” of illegal immigrants crossing the border from central America; a daily reality in the  border states of the USA.

But what this doesn’t really underline is how the law will be enforced - there’s no real objecctive way to tap who is illegal and who is not. There is an urgent need of understanding that beyond being mandated legislation, this is a law institutionalizing racism at it’s boldest. Arizona’s history is replete with difficult clashes of the elite, uper class - usually white and from a certain conservative background. This is the state that bred John McCain to power, don’t forget. But the desert landscape and the unique mix of Latin culture gives the state an interesting place among the Southwest region. There’s no clear understanding how this particular law will be successful in barring “illegal” migration across the border when it can’t even assess the most accurate means of how an individual contributes to a state beyond status.

Further, as Aziza Ahmed chronicles in this blogpost, anti-immigrant sentiment isn’t restricted to racial profiling for border security, it ties into practices of education, healthcare, and reproductive health. I have never been to Arizona, but I can only come to see the hurt and despair such a law would create. Across borders, along lines, miliatarizing our points of contact furthering the divide of “them” and “us”. In a state that already catalyzes on inequalities, in a country that while priding it’s diverse make-up is reluctant to pass one “first-class” citizen status to a select few, this law duplicates the tense apartheid-like divisions of days bygone.

Luckily, this is not passively being subdued. While only a blip on mainstream media, especially when explosive headlines reinforcing abstract threats more directly play into the paranoid politics which control American social constructions today, there’s an outspoken and diverse community of activists, supporters, artists and local politicians speaking out against the reactionary and counterintuitive policies that follow the passing of this law.

Who knew Public Enemy’s By the Time I Get to Arizona, written 20 years prior, would so poignantly capture this situation.