Arizona's Infamous State Bill 1070

For centuries, the immigrant and the xenophobic conceptualizations associated with the foreign body as a subject of anonymity and conspicuous criminality have been thrust center stage into the realm of United States’ law in an attempt to implicitly establish the category of the “other.” More recently, in one of the provisions of Arizona's infamous State Bill 1070 (Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) enacted April 23, 2010 allows the check of immigration standing of anyone based on reasonable suspicion that they may be undocumented. The impetus for SB 1070 is attributed to shifting demographics leading to a larger Hispanic population and increased drugs- and human smuggling-related violence in Mexico and Arizona. This action, however, was a direct result of the Arizona state government feeling the urge to correct the consequences of federal government’s failure to implement a guided border policy. While these policies may seem to be something that can be easily dismissed as normal within the context of our country’s chronic symptom of border anxiety, there exists a subtleness at work that concerns the constitutionality of certain SB 1070 provisions, both proposed and enacted. Essentially, this bill is an exemplary illustration that draws the distinct relationship between policy and law. For example, a law in writing that serves as suitable policy might be considered unconstitutional by higher law. While SB 1070 is, with the exemption of one provision, defined as constitutional, it represents the antithesis of the aforementioned idea such that it imposes such harsh constraints that it may as well be deemed as an obstruction to naturalized rights, and is therefore unconstitutional in a sense.

In this paper, I will...

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...onal politics and the flaws in the understanding of our, what is supposed to be, a color-blind interpretation of national identity.

Works Cited

"Senate Bill 1070." Arizona Legislature. State of Arizona Senate, n.d. Web. April 2010.

Cisneros, Josue David. The Border Crossed Us: Rhetorics of Borders, Citizenship, and Latina/o Identity. 4th ed. Alabama: U of Alabama, 2014. 93-118. Print.

Foucault, Michel. "Panopticism." Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977. 46-72. Print.

Ana, Otto Santa, and Celeste González De Bustamante. Arizona Firestorm: Global Immigration Realities, National Media, and Provincial Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 197, 132-143. Print.

Kunichoff, Yanna, and Margaret Hu. "Could New Argument Against SB1070 Prove Law Is Unconstitutional?" Truthout. Truthout, 26 Apr. 2012. Web. 01 May 2014.