Voices for Civil Dialogue

Arizona has become the focal point of our national immigration debate, ever since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the law requiring state agents to verify the immigration status of individuals they suspect of being there illegally. In response, thousands of May Day marchers called for boycotts of the state, wearing T-shirts with slogans like, "You look suspicious, Arizona."

Frank Rich of the New York Times recently wrote, "don't blame it all on Arizona," since the state's "hysteria" is only a symptom of the "political virus" sweeping across America - from the birthers movement to tea party activism. He made a good point, but he ignored the long history of discrimination, xenophobia and scapegoating in a state where government has served its citizens poorly.

The inclination of Arizonans to target Mexicans as the cause of their political and financial problems has shaped the state's history for at least a century. In the middle of World War I, employers used fears of socialism as an excuse to fire Mexican workers, even as agricultural employers cited wartime labor shortages to justify hiring more. During the Great Depression, when Mexicans were seen as competition for jobs and burdens to public welfare, Arizonans used racist threats and scare tactics to

pressure Mexicans to return to Mexico.

Fears of invasion by an Axis "Fifth Column" preoccupied Arizonans during World War II, so Mexicans had to register with local officials and state their loyalties.

Similarly, during the Cold War, the McCarran-Walter Act justified deportation of suspected subversives, creating yet another pretext for discrimination against Mexicans in the name of political necessity.

Further Cold War-era demonization came in the form of Operation Wetback, a government tactic used to deport a million Mexicans during the mid-1950s.

More recently, economic hardship during the 1970s made Mexican immigrants convenient targets of violence. In the 1976 Hanigan incident, white ranchers were accused of kidnapping, robbing and torturing Mexican immigrant workers. It ominously forecast the discrimination Mexican immigrants faced during the remainder of the 20th century.

As Congress debated the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Arizonans again ratcheted up threats against Mexican immigrants. Operation Gatekeeper and California's Proposition 187, which aimed to crack down on undocumented immigrants, characterized anti-Mexican sentiment of the 1990s.

At each of these moments, Arizonans attempted to justify vigilance, state laws and acts of violence in non-racial terms. Mine owners during World War I and politicians during the Cold War railed against socialists and Communists, not Mexicans. When President Ronald Reagan signed IRCA, supporters of the bill argued that employer sanctions would not discriminate against Mexican job applicants. In the 1990s, Minutemen rallied to enforce border controls but claimed to love Mexicans who migrated legally.

Those assurances meant little to Mexicans who faced discrimination nonetheless. Brewer's insistence that the immigration law would safeguard the civil rights of all citizens should therefore bring us little comfort, because such guarantees have repeatedly been violated in the past.

On a hopeful note, past discriminations led to vibrant social justice and civil-rights movements. Already, the new Arizona law is eliciting the same response.

Demonstrations against the bill led Arizona's Legislature to scale back some of its most racist provisions, and thousands marched on May Day.

As the Obama administration revives a debate over comprehensive immigration reform, the lessons of Arizona become all the more important. Too many Americans have displaced their anxieties about internal turmoil onto Mexican immigrants. Before doing so again, we must examine our own social, political and economic failures.

Immigrants face challenges enough without having heaped upon them the problems of others.

A native of Tucson, Geraldo L. Cadava teaches Latino history at Northwestern University. Harvard University Press will publish his forthcoming book on the Arizona-Sonora border region since World War II. E-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it